The diaries of Herman Nash, Class of 1917,
bring the campus of a century ago to life.

22

The Old Horse Barn

A historic building will link our agricultural past and future.

16 Science Notebook
Great discoveries from three centuries.

24

The Man Who Cultivated Mass Aggie

40 UMass People
Campus characters.

Under the banner of “art for all,” Professor Frank A. Waugh
energetically expanded the college’s horizons.

44 Bookmarks
UMass Press Turns 50.

28

Beauty, Cravings, and Virtue

Two professors explore our campus architecture.

32

The Boom Years

The campus comes of age in the 1960s.

36

Meet Me After Class

Today’s students build timeless friendships.

38 Looking into the Future
UMass in 50 years.

On the cover: Images of a growing University of
Massachusetts Amherst. At right: Modern dance was
part of the physical education curriculum in the 1930s
when this student posed as “Spring.”
Special thanks to the staff of the UMass Amherst
Libraries Special Collections and University Archives
for their assistance with this issue.

“Could You Still Get In?” (Fall 2012)
has been bothering me since I read it.
I want to write a “feel good” letter and
yet I can’t. If I were a journalist my
letter would be titled “Who is being left
behind?”
In the spring of 1968 I was accepted
as a marginal student called a “swingshifter.” We 450 students went to UMass
during the summer immediately
after high school graduation. The fall
semester we went home and returned
second-semester spring. I think those
of us who made the grade during the
summer filled the slots of students who
didn’t make the grade during the fall
semester. The swing-shifter program
commenced in 1964 and was still in
place when I graduated in 1972.
I graduated with a BA in political
science and on Senior Day when my
classmates were robed and receiving
diplomas, I was washing dishes at a
local restaurant back at home. It was
what I had done before college and
was comfortable doing after college.
I did not know what to do with my
college degree. I then went on to work
in warehousing for four years and did a
10-year stint as a maintenance plumber
at a local harness racetrack.
While a plumber, I went to night
school at then Bridgewater State
College and five years later, in 1982,
I received an MA in teaching. I did
get robed for that milestone. I spent
the next 20 years supervising the
reference services at the Massachusetts
Archives and currently am employed
as the director of volunteer and
religious services for the Massachusetts
Department of Correction. All four
of my children attended UMass. They
are all professionals in their fields of
study: chemical engineering, marketing,
restaurant management, and video
engineering.
I owe it all—everything that defines
who I am—to the chance UMass
gave me as a student who probably
would not get in today. Given the
higher bar for acceptance, how many
Massachusetts students are being denied
the opportunity that I have had to live a
fulfilled life?
Bill Milhomme ’72
Foxboro, Mass.

Alumni, no matter when we attended
UMass, made contributions to create
the UMass we know today, and
continue to contribute to UMass. My
“affinity group,” who skipped classes to
organize against nuclear power plants,
including civil disobedience, or held
the first “Take Back the Night” rally at
UMass, were among those who helped
create the “alternative” culture for
which UMass is so well known. During
my time, this environment produced
independent critical thinkers who
went on in many directions and made
changes in and their marks upon the
world. I am sure not all of them were
honor students in high school, and
that mix of differently driven students
was to me the heart of the UMass
experience.
I wish only the best to the
current students, even those who, as
suggested in the article, just paste on
extracurricular activities to their high
honor grades to get accepted. I hope
they leave UMass with meaningful
in- and out-of-classroom memories
and experiences that help shape them
into adults who promote democracy,
help other people and push for a better
world. I know that holds true for me.
Linda Geary, Esq. ’86
Gardiner, New York

No Ceilings
Re. “No Walls” (Fall 2012).
In 1972, the year after the founding
of University Without Walls, I was the
first University of Massachusetts BGS
[Bachelor of General Studies] graduate.
It certainly stimulated me to continue
my studies and to seek higher plateaus.
I began my studies at Massachusetts
State College at Ft. Devens soon after
returning from service in the Navy
Air Corps during WWII. I dropped
out in late ’47, opened a business,
and applied for a position as a
trooper with the Massachusetts State
Police. Fortune smiled upon me as I
proceeded up the ladder to the rank
of major. After retiring from the MSP
I graduated from the BGS program,
then continued to a master’s in
education and a doctorate in criminal
justice administration. I worked as
director and senior professor at the
spring 2013

3

Inbox
Criminal Justice Institute at Broward
Community College for 20 years, and
later worked as a deputy sheriff in
Monroe County, Florida, and taught at
Key West Community College.
Stanley W. Wisnioski, Jr. ’72, ’73G
Brigadier General, MSG, retired
Cottondale, Florida

Bringing Lumenti to Light
“Cruz and Quick: At the top of their
games” (Fall 2012) brought to mind
another great UMass athlete who has
been all but forgotten—my fellow
dorm rat at Van Meter, Ralph Lumenti.
Ralph was one of the best baseball
pitchers ever at UMass. Going to
the games on campus when he was
pitching, I remember the major league
scouts standing behind the backstop

with their radar guns and clipboards
charting his every pitch. He did
finally sign a contract with the then
Washington Senators after his junior
year and that summer was pitching
in the majors. They let him go back
to school to start his senior year but
wanted him to come to Boston at the
end of the season and pitch against
the Red Sox at Fenway. It would have
been nice to say he shut our town
team down but that was not the case.
Lefty pitched just a few years in the
majors and minors before arm trouble
cut short his career—there were no
miracle surgeries in those days to cure
sore arms.
There are probably a lot of us who
remember the old lefthander from his
days on the UMass campus.
Mel Foster ’57
Lompoc, California

The Redmen sure were a heck of a lot
more fun back in the days when I was an
assistant in the sports information office.
Athletic Director Warren McGuirk and I
used to sit on folding chairs on the roof
of the old press box and watch game
action unfold below. When UConn, led
by halfback Lenny King, stomped us
71-6, Warren turned to me through his
Coke-bottle-thick glasses and said, “Shall
I jump first or you?”
Ted Raymond ’59
El Mirage, Arizona

Love From L.A.
Really enjoyed the recent issue.
Hope you can keep printing into the
future and not follow Newsweek into the
matrix.
Jay Lawrence Goldman ’86
Los Angeles, California

Professor of Computer Science Prashant Shenoy will be one
of the researchers working with the academic cloud in the new
Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center.
The building runs on low-cost, efficient hydroelectricity from
Holyoke’s canal system.

JOHN SOLEM

NIP, SNIP, SNIP… shiny ceremonial scissors were
put to work in the fall in ribbon-cutting ceremonies
for a computer center, a structural testing facility, and a
major renovation of Lederle Graduate Research Center
labs. Meanwhile, three giant construction projects—the
Commonwealth Honors College Residential Complex, the
New Academic Building, and the Life Science Laboratories
building—zoomed ahead.
Governor Deval Patrick and other dignitaries were on
hand for the opening of the Massachusetts Green High
Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) in Holyoke
in November. The sophisticated building is the result of
collaboration among academic partners UMass, Harvard
University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston
University, and Northeastern University working closely
with state government and private industry. The energy
efficient building has been called a home for the “academic
cloud.” It will accommodate thousands of computers capable
of carrying out super-fast calculations and storing massive
amounts of data, keeping them energized, cool, and secure.
With the help of a grant from the National Science
Foundation, computer science researcher Prashant Shenoy
will be one of the first with a computer cluster humming
in the MGHPCC. Scientists working in genetics, climate
studies, and other fields will soon use the building to house
their powerful computers as well.
In December, campus officials and scientists celebrated
the completion of a two-year, $12.3 million laboratory
renovation in Lederle. The project will enhance research in
the biological and physical sciences and make the campus
competitive nationally. The 15,000 square feet of lab space
on three floors was rebuilt to allow more interdisciplinary
cooperation. The project was funded with $7.1 million
from the National Institutes of Health received via a very
competitive grant process through the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and $5.2 million from the
university.
Earlier in the fall, UMass Amherst dedicated the
Robert B. Brack Structural Testing Facility
on Tillson Way. Engineering students
and researchers will use the structure
to test full-size elements such as
beams and girders. Robert B.
Brack ’60, former owner and
chairman of the board of
the Barker Steel Company,
spearheaded the funding for
the new testing facility.
While new buildings went
up, one campus landmark
came down: the old coalfired power plant has been
demolished and its red brick
chimneys no longer tower over
central campus.

JOHN SOLEM

S

A new structural testing facility
(above) will attract top engineering
students to campus. Lead donor
Robert B. Brack ’60 (center),
cuts the ribbon with Richard
Palmer, head of civil and
environmental engineering
(left), and Chancellor Kumble
Subbaswamy (right).

spring 2013

5

Around the Pond

The Shag is Shed
OR ITS FORTIETH birthday, the Department of Theater
is getting a facelift.
A campaign is on for the renovation of the Rand Theater in
the Fine Arts Center: a campaign that will improve the energy
efficiency, accessibility, and safety of the performance space. So
far, the update has been primarily, and quite visibly, cosmetic.
Removing the walls that separated one row of seats in the
Rand from another has created greater intimacy between
the performers and the audience. And the orange shag
carpeting, a relic of the FAC’s 1970s design, has been ripped
out. The costume shop designed a zany and appropriately
1970s-inflected suit for Department Chair Penny Remsen to
wear in a video spot appealing to donors. The suit is available
for a $4,000 donation, or donors can have one customtailored. Also available are shag carpet hearts, cat scratching
posts, and t-shirts that boast “I shagged in the Rand.”
The reboot of the space follows the complete restoration
of the Curtain Theater two years ago, an overhaul that made
that space modular, and installed a state-of-the-art wire
tension grid for lighting, rigging, and effects. The campaign
will continue to raise money to complete the Rand Lobby
by installing a new box office, energy-efficient lighting, and
accessible restrooms.
Versatility is a hallmark of UMass theater graduates. The
program awards a BA, which, unlike a more specialized
BFA, requires students to have an aptitude in all facets of
understanding and staging a production. The ten goals
for an undergraduate pursuing a UMass degree include an
understanding of all fields of theater making, a thorough
understanding of the production process, and the ability to
engage in teamwork.

JON CRISPIN

F

Penny Remsen models a suit made
of the Rand Theater’s shag carpet.

Smaller companies with limited budgets are more likely to
hire an actor who can lift a wrench as well as act, says Remsen.
Because of that versatility, “there is a great deal of trust in
the UMass name,” continues Remsen. “They assume that new
alums will have a high level of competence.”
Loyalty and trust among graduates have created a legacy
on campus as well as off. Although the Department of Theater
has existed for only 40 years as an academic program, the theater
tradition on campus dates back to the Roister Doisters, an
extracurricular group active in the early years of Massachusetts
Agricultural College and overseen from 1920 to 1947 by
legendary English professor Frank Prentice Rand ’55Hon,
whose name is on the Rand Theater. Doris Abramson ’49, the
late professor emeritus being honored in the current theater
season, was also a member. A feeling of continuity has resulted
in close mentoring relationships and a welcoming sense of
community that are the program’s hallmarks and have helped
refine the department’s approach.
In theater, says Remsen, “you rely on the whole person you
are working with.”

JOHN SOLEM

—Laura Marjorie Miller

Covering the
Bases

T

Traveling Band
HE INCOMPARABLE MINUTEMAN Marching Band
has been selected to march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving
Day Parade on November 28, 2013. More than 3.5 million
people will watch the parade live on the streets of New York
City, so if you plan to travel to cheer the band, book your
hotel room now!

6

umass amherst

JOHN SOLEM

T

HREE MAJOR LEAGUE
baseball managers, all UMass
Amherst alumni, returned to campus
for a question and answer session
moderated by ESPNBoston.com
reporter Mike Reiss ’97. Above,
from left: Chris Antonetti ’98G of the
Cleveland Indians, Ben Cherington
’97G of the Boston
Red Sox, and Neal Huntington ’92G
of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Around the Pond

Mr. Olver Comes Home
from Washington

wonk, Olver displayed a depth of knowledge on a wide range
of topics at the symposium.
Professor of Economics M.V. Lee Badgett, also director
of the Center for Public Policy and Administration, told the
crowd at the Campus Center Auditorium that Olver is the
kind of politician who deftly uses idealism and practicality to
promote a better world. Through the donation of his papers to
the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, scholars will be able to study his
style of politics and his life.

JOHN SOLEM

DENNIS VANDAL

S A MEMBER of the U.S. House of Representatives for 21
years, John W. Olver ’81Hon, the Amherst Democrat
who retired in 2012, has been a staunch ally of UMass
Amherst. With Olver’s influence, the campus won federal
funds for new buildings, sophisticated scientific equipment,
and research. Before going to Washington, D.C., Olver served
in the State House of Representatives from 1969 to 1973 and
the State Senate from 1973 to 1991. Olver’s bond to UMass
Amherst dates from 1961 when he was a faculty member in
the chemistry department.
In November, the campus honored Olver, regarded as one
of the most liberal in Congress, with a daylong symposium
on Building Just and Sustainable Communities. As they
addressed transportation’s role in economic development,
human rights and social justice, conservation and
sustainability, and energy from renewable sources, speakers
and panel members frequently praised Olver’s foresight and
advocacy for public policy. Forever the teacher and policy

THOM KENDALL ’93

A

Junot Díaz
Packs the House

A
Salute to Service

C

HANCELLOR KUMBLE SUBBASWAMY recognized television journalist
Liz Walker for her excellence in public service at the first UMass Amherst
Salute to Service Awards, held in Boston in November. Walker is the co-founder
of My Sister’s Keeper, a grassroots initiative in Sudan that advocates for women
and children who are trying to rebuild their lives and country. Also recognized for
outstanding public service were philanthropist Robert Kraft, chairman and CEO
of The Kraft Group and of the New England Patriots, and Robert Littleton Jr. ’71,
founder of the nonprofit Evergreen Center, a residential school serving children with
autism and severe developmental disabilities.

CCLAIMED AUTHOR
Junot Díaz had a spirited
discussion with students in the
Master of Fine Arts program during
a November campus visit when he
was the guest speaker for the English
Department’s annual Troy Lecture.
Díaz’s latest book is This is How You
Lose Her. His 2008 novel, The Brief
Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, won
the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the
National Book Critics Circle Award.
On campus, Díaz met with both
graduate and undergraduate students
and later addressed a packed Bowker
Auditorium.
spring 2013

7

S

TUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, and
visitors walk by the Old Chapel every
day, pose in front of it for photographs
and sit on its steps in the nice weather
to study, meet, or just hang out. While
many marvel at its beauty from the outside, very few have seen the inside. Since
the late 1990s, after more than 100 years
as the heart of the campus, the Old Chapel was closed to occupancy, a victim
of deteriorating systems and updated
building codes.
Built in 1884-85 with an initial budget of $25,000 the Old Chapel was constructed to be a “cabinet of natural history collections, a chapel for lectures and
religious services, a library and a reading room.” The initial amount wasn’t
quite enough to complete construction,
and the bell tower was finished in 1886.
Total cost was $31,000. Over the years it
has served those purposes, and more,
including president’s office, faculty offices, classrooms, graduation site, and a
setting for gatherings, conferences, and
meetings.
The library moved to Goodell in
1935 when construction of that building
was complete. After that the Old Chapel
was home to the history and English
departments, the Department of Music
and Performing Arts, and most recently,

8

umass amherst

from the 1960s to the 1990s,
the Minuteman Marching
Band.
As a step toward restoring the building to its former
presence as a campus hub
and center of activity, the
senior class, in the spirit of
celebrating the university’s
sesquicentennial, has created as its class gift the Class
of 2013 Old Chapel Fund to
support the renovation and reopening
of the Old Chapel, to provide spaces
to display UMass history and collections, as well as areas to host events and
functions.
“The Chapel is such a landmark, and
one of the most historic buildings on
campus as well,” says Lauren Byrne ’13,
senior campaign co-chair. “I think seniors will support the cause because it
is a place that will be a great gathering
space for both the public and students,
and we will be able to help open up a
building that for so long hasn’t been
used to its fullest potential.”
The building received early student
support as all members of the class of
1886 contributed $20 each to help finish
the building’s construction. According
to Sarah Sligo ’00, executive director of

BEN BARNHART

Senior Class Supports the Old Chapel

The Old Chapel was open for tours
during Homecoming Week, the first
time access has been granted to the
building since it was officially closed
in the late 1990s.

annual giving, the senior class wants to
replicate that class spirit and commitment, and is looking for participation
by as many seniors as possible.
“Being able to contribute to the renovation and reopening of such a historic
part of our school would be something
our senior class could be proud of,” says
Nick DePierro ’13 senior campaign cochair, “I look forward to coming back
after the Old Chapel is finished to see
the contribution our class was able to
make on this campus.”
—Robert Lindquist

150
YEARS

This special issue of UMass Amherst celebrates our
sesquicentennial year. As the timeline and articles that follow
demonstrate, our history has been rich and varied and we have
much in which to take pride.

April 29, 2013, will mark the 150th anniversary of the signing of our
campus charter. In the days before that date and in the months following
UMass Amherst will offer a series of commemorative events, exhibits, and
community projects. The sesquicentennial Founders Week celebration
will include an Alumni Football Game on April 20; a talk by
environmentalist Annie Leonard on Earth Day, April 22; Celebration
of Agriculture Day on April 25; Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
inauguration on April 27; and a daylong celebration of Founders Day on
April 29. Additional events will take place in the fall, including a major
public celebration in Boston of UMass Amherst. For updated information
and more on our sesquicentennial, go to: www.umass.edu/150.

spring 2013

9

Evolution of a University
The long and winding rise
of today’s UMass Amherst

Land-Grant Origins (1862–1899)

MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE (MAC, or
“Mass Aggie”) is founded under the Morrill Land-Grant
Colleges Act to provide the commonwealth’s citizens with
instruction in the “agricultural, mechanical, and military arts.”
It struggles to define its mission and defend itself against the
stubborn skepticism of some politicians and citizens.

1865
November 29: MAC Board of
Trustees elects Henry Flagg
French the college’s first
president.

1869
The first edition of MAC’s
yearbook, The Index, is
published.

April 29: Governor John A. Andrew signs the
charter of Massachusetts Agricultural College.

1867
William Smith Clark, third president of the college and professor of
botany, appoints a faculty and completes the campus’s long-delayed
construction plan, thereby becoming MAC’s first functioning president
and primary founding father.
October 2: The first Mass Aggie class, 56 students, arrives.
Tuition is $36. The faculty includes four members.

1902

Aggie Life becomes the
College Signal.
First professional coaches
hired.

MAC’s first Ph.D degree, in
entomology, is awarded.

1870

Twenty-seven students receive
B.S. degrees at MAC’s first
commencement.
MAC defeats Brown and Harvard at a
regatta in Springfield.

1872

1873

1876

Tuition rises to $75.

1878
State Experiment Station established.

Mass Aggie Evolves (1900–1930)

Enrollment at 171 students.

Dorm room, c. 1880s

1899
Free tuition for U.S.
citizens established.

1888

Liberal arts
added to
curriculum.

umass amherst

MAC’s curricular scope expands to include the liberal arts,
and World War I and its aftermath inspire an increasingly
international outlook on the part of faculty and students.
There is a growing push to see the college recognized as
something more than an agricultural school.

Clark invited by the Japanese government
to help establish an agricultural college
and experimental farm in the province
of Hokkaido. In his absence, Levi
Stockbridge serves as acting college
president.

1882

10

1901

Tuition rises to $54.

1871

PHOTOS SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES

1863

1892

Hatch Experiment Station Campus pond
established.
created.

1896
The graduating class is MAC’s
first to wear caps and gowns at
commencement.
First two master’s degrees
awarded.

The G.I. Bill facilitates financial aid for returning veterans
and causes an explosion of applicants at what is now the
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS. New residential halls
and other buildings dramatically transform the campus.

1947
May 6: Massachusetts State
College becomes the University of
Massachusetts.
School of Engineering founded.

1948
Sports teams dubbed
the Redmen.

1949

Expansion Amid Social Unrest (1960–1979)

The Fort Devens campus is closed.
Student-operated AM radio station
WMUA begins broadcasting.

In 1960, the university’s greatest periods of
development and expansion begins. As social and
antiwar protests erupt, a multi-campus UMass
system is born.

1950
School of Business
Administration founded.

1953
School of Nursing founded.

1955
Sciences and liberal arts joined
to create College of Arts and
Sciences.

1956

1962

School of Education founded.

University celebrates its
centennial.
Enrollment reaches a
new high of 7,600.

University Without Walls, one of the nation’s first adult bachelor’s
degree completion programs, is founded.
Julius Erving, the celebrated Dr. J, having led UMass to its first two
conference championships, wraps up his UMass career.

Everywoman’s Center opens.
Campus teams become “Minutemen” or
“Minutewomen” rather than “Redmen.”

International Presence (1997–2013)

As its research standing reaches new heights,
UMass Amherst becomes a magnet for
students and faculty from across the nation
and around the world.
1996
Southwest
Residential
Complex

2012
Combined SAT average for first-year students
reaches a new high of 1197.
Out-of-state undergraduate enrollment reaches a
new high of 22 percent.
UMass designers submit master plan for campus
development.
U.S. News and World Report ranks Amherst among
America’s Top 10 Great College Towns.
UMass football team upgrades to the FBS level and
the Mid-American Conference.

ASEBALL AND ROWING were the first organized athletic activities for students. Each
of the college’s first four entering classes formed
baseball “nines” and a varsity team was selected
as well. All the teams made up the Wilder Baseball
Association, as it was known, and rivals included
Williston Seminary, Amherst High School, the
Springfield Baseball Club, and Amherst College.
Except for a few early interruptions and breaks
during the war years, intercollegiate baseball has
consistently been part of campus athletics since
1877. The UMass baseball team participated in
the College World Series in 1954 and in 1969 and
has sent several players to the major leagues including two-time All-Star Jeff Reardon ’78, 1979
American League Cy Young Award winner Mike
Flanagan, and Gary DiSarcina, who played in
1,086 games in an 11-year career.
Before the first classes had graduated from
Mass Aggie, students organized a rowing club
and entered the sport, which, until then, was exclusively a pastime of the classical colleges. The
MAC club was victorious in its first and
only race in 1870, defeating Amherst College. Encouraged by this early success, a
year later the MAC team joined Amherst,
Bowdoin, Brown, and Harvard in the newly formed Rowing Association of American Colleges. On July 21, 1871, the upstart
farmers from MAC pulled off a stunning
upset victory in the association’s first collegiate regatta on the Connecticut River
near Springfield, defeating heavily favored
Harvard by 14 lengths, with Brown another 20 lengths behind. The victory was
the high point for
the MAC crews who
rowed unsuccessfully in the next two
regattas, losing to
Amherst and Yale.
The early boating
association lasted
through 1875 but
rowing has a long
history as a club
sport on campus.
It became a varsity
women’s sport in
1996 and that team

Coach Pam Hixon’s 1992 Final Four field hockey
team. 1870 MAC crew on the Connecticut.

later when the team made six NIT appearances and attracted top players
like Julius Erving ’86, ’86G(Hon), Ray
Ellerbrook ’71, Tom McLaughin ’73,
Al Skinner ’74, and Rick Pitino ’75.
UMass basketball hit the national
stage again in the 1990s when John Calipari ’97Hon, in his first head coaching
job, led the Minutemen to five NCAA
tournaments, culminating with the
1996 NCAA Final Four. UMass became
a household name thanks to players
like Marcus Camby, Harper Williams
’95, Lou Roe, Tony Barbee ’94, Donta
Bright, and current head coach Derek
Kellogg ’95. From Dec. 3, 1994 through
March 30, 1996, UMass played in 36
games ranked as the No. 1 team in the
country, and from January 1992 through
November 1998, the Minutemen were
fixtures in the Associated Press Top 25
poll, marking the only point in the program’s 104 seasons where the school was
ranked.
For nearly a century varsity teams
were supported exclusively in men’s
sports while athletic activities for women were geared more toward physical
education and intramural and club
teams. That all changed in the 1968-69
season when basketball was introduced
as the first varsity sport for women. The
team jumped off to a quick start with
a 13-2 record that first year and team
highlights in subsequent years include a
WNIT appearance in 1994-95 and two
trips to the NCAA tournament (199596 and 1997-98).
The passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 leveled the
playing field for women and varsity programs and other opportunities expanded: softball and tennis (1975), swimming
and lacrosse (1976), soccer (1978) and
rowing (1996).

In its relatively short history,
softball has had a phenomenal
run. After posting losing records the first
two seasons, the team hasn’t had a losing
season since, and has become one of the
top programs in the country. The team
has appeared in three Women’s College
World Series, captured 23 Atlantic 10
regular season championships and 23
tournament titles, and participated in
the NCAA tournament 21 times. Head
coach Elaine Sortino ’03Hon has 1,167
career wins in 33 years as head coach
and was inducted into the National
Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of
Fame in 2004. The playing field at the
UMass softball complex was named in
her honor last fall.
Field hockey has had similar success,
with 23 NCAA appearances, reaching the Final Four in 1981, 1983, 1987,
and 1992, in addition to 14 Atlantic 10
regular-season titles and 13 tournament
championships.
Women’s soccer also rose to great
heights during the 1980s as a national
power. The Minutewomen made the
NCAA Final Four five straight times
from 1983-1988 culminating in a visit
to the national title game in 1988. In all,
the program has made the NCAA tournament 15 times with six trips to the
Final Four. Briana Scurry, one of the
most well-known women's soccer players on the Olympic and international
stage hails from UMass.
While women’s lacrosse hasn’t
had the same longevity of success that
some of the other women’s programs
have had, it does have something that
only three athletic programs at UMass
have—a national championship title. In
1982, UMass, under the tutelage of Hall
of Fame coach Pam Hixon ’02Hon,
won the first-ever NCAA sponsored
national title in women’s lacrosse.
—Robert Lindquist
spring 2013

15

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES

has been very successful,
winning 12 consecutive
Atlantic 10 championships
(1996-2008) and making
three NCAA appearances.
The first intercollegiate football game in the
United States took place
in New Brunswick, New
Jersey, between Princeton
and Rutgers in November 1869. Massachusetts
Agricultural College organized its first team in 1875 and played
its first intercollegiate contest four years
later, defeating Amherst College 4-0 on
Alumni Field. Following the creation of
the Yankee Conference in 1947, UMass
football developed into a perennial New
England power. Under the direction of
Coach Vic Fusia ’81Hon, from 1961 to
1970, UMass football won five Yankee
Conference Championships, and in
1964 made its first post-season appearance in the Tangerine Bowl. Before the
conference morphed into the Atlantic
10 in 1997 and then the Colonial Athletic Association in 2007, UMass had
posted 17 Yankee Conference championships, two bowl appearances, and
three NCAA tournament appearances.
After posting a dismal 2-9 record
in 1997, UMass named Mark Whipple
coach. He promised a national championship and in a stunning turnaround
delivered, guiding the team to an NCAA
national championship the following
year. The Minutemen went on to post
five more conference championships
and five NCAA berths before transitioning to the Mid-American Conference in the Football Bowl Subdivision
this past fall.
Basketball was first introduced to
campus in 1898. A year later the team
played against outside teams and the
first varsity games were played in 1902.
The team had a moderately successful first year, winning five and losing
three. The sport was dropped in 1909
due to lack of interest and support. It
was revived in 1916, but it wasn’t until
the 1960s that the program attracted
national attention with its first Yankee
Conference championship and appearance in the NCAA tournament. That
success gave UMass a national presence
and set the stage for success a decade

The Gaia Theory and Symbiogenesis
Distinguished University Professor and National Medal of Science recipient
Lynn Margulis combined microbiology, chemistry, geology, paleogeography and
many other disciplines to form a unique vision of the Earth and humans’ place
in the cosmos. This integrated view led to her contributions to Gaia Theory and
endosymbiosis and to her theory of symbiogenesis. Symbiogenesis posits that
inherited variation, a basis of Darwinian evolution, does not come mainly from
random mutations. Instead, new tissues, organs and even new species evolve
through a collaborative “intimacy of strangers,” her phrase for expressing how
microorganisms join forces and evolve over time to solve problems together.

Stockbridge Fertilizer
Farmer Levi Stockbridge was one
of the most influential leaders
and professors in the early days of
Massachusetts Agricultural College.
He granted his former pupil,
William Bowker, Class of 1871, the
rights to sell his famous Stockbridge
Formula fertilizers. Bowker said
Stockbridge led farmers “out of the
wilderness of speculation into the
light of practical methods.”
SPECIAL C

16

O L L E C T I O N S , U M A S S A M H E R ST L I B R A R I E S

umass amherst

JESUS ALVELO

“ENDOSYMBIOSIS HOMAGE TO LYNN MARGULIS” BY SHOSHANA DUBINER

Science Notebook

Q Microbe
In 2002, microbiologist Susan
Leschine and fellow researchers
discovered the Q Microbe, a clean
alternative to fossil fuels. The microbe
can efficiently break down biomass
and ferment the sugars to ethanol.

Geobacter
Wind Turbine
The Wind Furnace 1, the innovative
turbine designed, built, and
operated by wind energy professors
and students at the University of
Massachusetts in the early 1970s,
marked the beginning of the
modern wind-electric era. The
WF-1 is now at the Smithsonian.

The electron-transporting bacteria
discovered by microbiologist
Derek Lovley in 1987 has
revolutionized hazardous cleanup
and unfolded immeasurable
potential in the fields of
microbial electrosynthesis and
bioelectronics. Geobacter species
make electrical contacts with
extracellular electron acceptors
and other organisms.

Great Discoveries

“A

MICHAEL KRAMER, JODRELL BANK
OBSERVATORY, UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

DISCIPLINED IMAGINATION IS at the bottom of every great discovery,”
said Carl R. Fellers, the brilliant researcher who led the UMass Amherst Food
Science department from 1941 to 1957. Our campus has fostered many thinkers
with disciplined imaginations. Here are some of their greatest discoveries.

Geckskin

Binary Pulsar

An adhesive device modeled on
gecko feet is one of the latest
breakthroughs from Polymer Science
and Engineering, working with the
biology department. A small piece of
Geckskin can attach objects as heavy
as 700 pounds to a smooth surface.
Polymer research has resulted in
scores of innovations in plastics,
rubbers, and other materials.

In 1974 UMass astrophysicist Joseph
Taylor ’94Hon and his student,
Russell Hulse ’72G, ’75PhD, ’94Hon
discovered binary pulsars using a
radiotelescope in Arecibo, Puerto
Rico. Taylor and Hulse won the
Nobel Prize in physics in 1993 for
their discovery, which contributed
to the understanding of gravity.

Cloned Calves
George and Charlie were two cloned
calves born in Texas in 1998 as part
of the genetic engineering research
of UMass Amherst veterinary and
animal science professor James
Robl. His laboratory was the first
to produce calves from genetically
modified somatic cells.

Foods of the Future
Frozen broccoli, canned shrimp, fish
sticks, surimi, Craisins, Cranapple juice—
these are just some of the products
directly related to research at our worldrenowned Department of Food Science.

The hockey stick graph showing
how global temperatures
changed over the last 1,000 years
has become an icon of global
warming. It was produced in the
Climate System Research Center
by post-doctoral researcher
Michael Mann, Geosciences
Distinguished Professor Raymond
Bradley, and University of Arizona
collaborator Malcolm Hughes.

Butternut Squash
It’s smooth as butter and sweet
as a nut. As part of a long legacy
of agricultural research, UMass
developed new vegetable varieties,
including a butternut squash, at its
Waltham experiment station.

of Students

A Quiet
Sort of Lad
The diaries of Herman Nash,
Class of 1917, bring the campus
of a century ago to life.

JOHN SOLEM

By Patricia Sullivan

18

umass amherst

O

N JANUARY 8,
1914, Herman
Beaman Nash,
finishing his
first semester at

Massachusetts Agricultural College,
writes in his pocket diary: “I found
that last fall we weren’t any greener
than any other fellows are when they
first strike the college.”
It’s a typically pithy entry for Nash, whose diaries
cover all but several months of his 1913 to 1917 agricultural studies at MAC. The four lines that his small
notebooks allot for each day don’t provide much room
for introspection—even if Nash had been the type. Still,
his diaries and bulging scrapbook, recently donated to
the Special Collections and University Archives at the
W.E.B. Du Bois Library, reveal a lot about the student
experience at MAC.
Born to an Amherst farming family, Nash works his
way through college by growing onions on an acre of
family land. He lives at home until his senior year, when
he rooms in North College. He doesn’t pledge one of the
many campus fraternities, but instead joins the Commons Club, a social organization open to any student,
and the campus YMCA.
When Nash matriculated in 1913, the campus was in
a boom period; Nash’s entering class had a record 202
students. His diaries shed light on why only about half
of those students completed four years at MAC. Geology, geometry, trigonometry, botany, physics, zoology,
chemistry, and public speaking were among the required courses. And passing wasn’t easy. Nash struggles
with German, fears flunking English, and spends full
days studying for four-hour exams. He collects plant
specimens for an herbarium. He makes superphosphate, lead arsenate, potassium nitrate, and more in
chemistry labs, and reads The Last Days of Pompeii and
“a queer book” called Jane Eyre. He comes to campus in
all weather for three hours a week of mandatory military drills with a Springfield rifle.
The rich social and cultural life of this MAC student
described by classmates in the 1917 Index as “a quiet
spring 2013

19

JOHN SOLEM

sort of lad” is striking. He attends many musical and theatrical
performances and stereopticon shows and even acts in a play.
He hears lectures on such timely subjects as the atom and “Why
Women Should Have the Ballot.” He plays football, hockey, and
the up-and-coming sport of “basket-ball,” and notes the results
of the traditional freshman-versus-sophomore class competitions, including the rope pull over the campus pond. He goes
to fireworks and strawberry suppers, makes ice cream at home,
takes dancing lessons, and enjoys the high-tech wonders of the
day—silent movies and the Victrola.
Hard labor, however, fills many of his days. On some winter Saturdays his diary reads “Sawed wood all day to-day.” On
other days he writes only “Stripped tobacco.” In the summer
before his senior year, Nash takes on a milk delivery route in
addition to his duties on the family farm and onion field, rising
as early as 1 a.m. to make deliveries and to wash bottles and the
milk wagon.

That summer, without a single day off until late August,
Nash complains of tiredness and confesses to naps, but for the
most part he is energetic and good-humored when not worried
about his MAC classes. Over the years he has a “grand time” at a
performance of the Messiah; receives a “dandy necktie” for his
20th birthday, hears “excellent” sermons, and has a “swell time”
sliding in the snow.
He also enjoys sweets as his expenses, listed neatly in the
back of each diary, reveal. He routinely buys fig bars and chewing gum and in March 1915 spends $1.10 on chocolate. In May
1916 he pays $5 to have his teeth filled.
The expense accounts demonstrate the worth of a reliable
bicycle, or “wheel,” used for transportation, not recreation. In
March 1915 Nash spends $10.24 on a “wheel” and in April 1916
he buys a new one for the then-princely sum of $30, followed
by a bike lamp and horn. He must have been a familiar sight
in Amherst, sharing the roads with horse-drawn wagons and

From the Diaries
of Herman Nash
Mon., Jan. 12, 1914

Mon., Feb. 2, 1914

Fri., Feb. 27, 1914

Had chem. lab this afternoon. I started
home about half past six. The wind was
blowing so hard and there was so much ice
in the road that I fell down once and was
blown, and nearly lifted off my feet, into
the ditch, but I fought my way along until
I turned the corner when the wind blew
me the rest of the way home—Swept the
schoolhouse and studyed [sic] till quarter
past ten p.m.

Second semester began. I went to the Treas.
office and he freed me from the great
burden of carrying around a little money.
Found that I got by all the “finals.”

Got stuck in Trig. to-day. Felt about like
thirty cents all the afternoon.

Thurs., Jan. 22, 1914
Last recitation in German. Porter raised
his hand to ask a question and Mr. Julian
said, “I am afraid Porter will die asking
questions.”
Thurs., Jan. 29, 1914
Had the final in Eng. to-day. Have one
more in solid geom. to-morrow. I think I
flunked the Eng. I got rattled and didn't
know what I was doing anyway. Don't feel
very good to-night. Am afraid I am going
to be sick or that something is going to
happen.

Tues., Feb. 3, 1914
In English to-day Mr. Smith said that we
looked like the six hundred, all that was
left of them, and I am afraid he intends to
nip me next semester but I plan to work
hard at the themes and other English work.
Assistant Professor of English Henry E.
Smith was comparing the Class of 1917
to the 637 British cavalry who made a
suicidal charge in the Crimean War, as
memorialized in Tennyson’s “The Charge
of the Light Brigade.”

umass amherst

Heard W.H. Taft at Amherst College hall
to-night on "Monroe Doctrine." He said
that we are not the only pebble on the
beach and that we should respect other
nations and not be suspicious if they were
well polished in manners. He is a nice,
jolly, agreeable man.
Sun., March 15, 1914
Had a memory meeting and I made up my
mind that I must try to do things which I
would like to recall to mind in future years
and leave undone all other things.

Sat., Feb. 7, 1914

Tues., March 17, 1914

Sawed wood and studyed a little. Saw
a bunch of M.A.C. fellows go by this
afternoon. They hardly knew me I guess
because I had on overalls & old clothes.

Cut algebra this morning in order to
finish my theme. Saw the corn and potato
exhibits in the Drill Hall.
Thurs., March 19, 1914

Sat., Feb. 14, 1914
It has been snowing hard all day and I
haven't done anything but eat, read, and
study.

20

Tues., March 10, 1914

Saw the stock parade this afternoon and
stayed up to the band concert. Saw three
girls, H., B., & C., home.

Model T’s as he pedaled night and day from the family farm on
Mt. Warner Road to his various jobs and social engagements to
campus and back again. According to the cyclometer readings
he jots in his diaries, he rides more than 1,000 miles a year.
During his junior and senior years, Nash’s diary entries increasingly reflect the advent of World War I. The 1917 MAC academic year is cut short to allow students to enlist or to support
the war effort with agricultural work. In March, a few weeks
before the official declaration of war, Nash clears his room
in North College of everything except some pennants and a
class picture and leaves Amherst behind. He sails for France in
September 1918 and is a first lieutenant at the front when the
Armistice is signed on November 11. He spends a few months
putting his MAC education to work teaching agriculture in
France. He then returns to Amherst, works on the farm, and
teaches before getting a job with the Springfield, Mass., post
office. He marries and has three children. One of his grand-

daughters, Alice Nash, will become a professor of history at
UMass Amherst and a great-grandson, Zachary Nash ’16, will
enroll in UMass as a chemical engineering student in 2012, 99
years after Herman entered MAC.
Nash intermittently kept up his journals, and wrote letters
and poetry until the end of his life in 1977, at age 82. The college diaries he left behind are valuable in providing a picture of
an ordinary student’s daily life, says Assistant Professor Alice
Nash, whose own interest in history was rooted in her family’s
“pack rat tendencies.” A couple of years ago she took Herman’s
diaries and scrapbooks down from the attic of the family home
and began donating them and other family papers to the university archives. “Our family was not notable or important,” she
says, “but we valued higher ed. To me, the fact that my grandfather was able to pay his way through college with farm work is
a wonderful comment on public education.”

Fri., April 17, 1914

Fri., Dec. 31, 1915

It seems like a strange world to-day, for
when I went to college this morning the
ground and roofs of buildings were covered
with 3 or four inches of snow, make a
very beautiful picture. This was about
seven o'clock in the morning. When I
came home in the afternoon all the snow
had disappeared except on the hills in the
distance.

Chopped wood to-day. Kentfields took us
on a sleighride. 16 of us. Went to movies
in Northampton. Got home a little before
12 and watched old year out playing the
Victrola.
Fri., May 5, 1916
Had 1917 class tree planting to-night.
Planted 2 trees one each side of the gate to
the Alumni Field.

Mon., June 7, 1915
Exam in Botany. Short but sweet. Couldn't
name 10 flowers by their real name to save
my neck.
Wed., Oct. 6, 1915
Had a [Class of] 1917 get together to
night. Barrel of sweet cider. Hot dogs and
peanuts. Good fire in fireplace.

Tues., Nov. 7, 1916
Went down to Hadley on bicycle to cast
my first ballot.
Nash voted for Charles Evans Hughes,
who was narrowly defeated by incumbent
President Woodrow Wilson.
Thurs., March 1, 1917

Went to dedication of Stockbridge Hall this
afternoon and to husking bee to- night.

Came out in papers about German plot to
ask Mexico & Japan to fight against us in
case we go to war with Germany….Truly
these are perilous times we are coming to.

Sat., Dec. 11, 1915

Fri., March 23, 1917

Chopped wood all day to-day and read
Trail of Lonesome Pine tonight, great book.

Packed up to leave college…. Exams all
finished. Work completed.

Fri., Oct. 29, 1915

fall 2012

17

THE OLD

of Agriculture

A historic building will link our
agricultural past and future.

JOHN SOLEM

By Laura Marjorie Miller

FORMER SHOWCASE FOR Mass Aggie is
getting a vital second life as a learning center for the
future of agriculture across the commonwealth.
Built in 1894, UMass Amherst’s horse barn was used to stable the university’s Percheron
workhorses until the 1940s. It then became a home for Morgan horses retired from the
disbanded United States Cavalry, and then for UMass Amherst’s Morgan breeding program
until 1991, when the program was relocated to Tillson Farm. One of the oldest buildings on
campus, it now sits overlooked between two of the newest—the George N. Parks Marching
Band Building and the Recreation Center.
The barn, known alternately in UMass annals as the “Horse Barn” and the “Farm Barn,”
has been boarded up for more than 20 years, but the impressive structure is too precious for
UMass to lose. Instead, it has been chosen to serve as the focal point of the UMass Amherst
Agricultural Learning Center, a new undergraduate and public learning laboratory for
science disciplines that relate to agricultural and landscape activities in Massachusetts.
The center will occupy the former Adams-Wysocki Field on North Pleasant Street, an
area of more than 50 acres that is a quick bike ride from the main campus. The land will be
segmented for a broad array of agricultural enterprises: vegetable and fruit growing; dairy,
turf management, and forestry sections; and even a small cranberry bog. Farming there
should begin in time to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of Massachusetts
Agricultural College.

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JOHN SOLEM

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES

State-of-the-art for its day, the barn,
designed by architect F.F. Gilman, featured innovations like individual hay
chutes from a soaring loft with struts
and beams like the belly of a great
wooden ship. It was designed “with
time and motion efficiencies in mind,”
according to Stockbridge graduate
Richard Bourgault ’71S, who used to
feed and water the university’s Morgans every day before his 8 a.m. class.
To preserve the uniqueness and
beauty of the specialized structure,
the barn will be relocated as a single
unit in the late summer of 2013. “It’s
very important to celebrate its original identity as a stable,” to reflect the
agricultural heritage of UMass Amherst,
says Stephen Herbert, associate dean of
the College of Natural Sciences and director of the Center for Agriculture.
During the first century following
the founding of Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1863, most practical agricultural training took place on
campus, traces of which are reflected in
the names of such campus locations as
Orchard Hill. But after the major residential expansions of the 1960s and ’70s,
much of that activity moved off campus:
to the Cold Spring Orchard in Belchertown, and to the agronomy and vegetable farm in South Deerfield, making the
practice of agriculture no longer part
of the daily experience of students. The
location of the new center within easy
distance will allow many more students
to “get their hands in the dirt,” according
to William Mitchell ’73, ’75G, assistant

Practical and picturesque: the horse barn as it appeared in 1918.

dean of undergraduate student affairs
for the Stockbridge School.
“Many students pursuing careers
in agriculture have little to no farmrelated experience, and are often firstgeneration farmers,” says Tom Hastings,
director of development for the College
of Natural Sciences. “For them the firsthand experience will really tell them if
this is a career they want.” The center
will allow students hands-on practice
in a location convenient to campus,
where they can learn traditional farming methods as well as innovations in
food systems research. “As the blueberries grow, the students can be there
for them,” Hastings smiles.
Dean of the College of Natural Sciences Steve Goodwin says the installation of the agricultural learning center
on campus and the surge of students in-

A scale model of the new Agricultural Learning Center,
shown at its future home on Adams-Wysocki Field.

terested in agriculture, seen in the popularity of the Franklin Permaculture
Garden, remind him of the “back-tothe-land” mindset from his own youth.
“It is remarkable how many students
who are interested in farming come
from cities. It’s a very common interest today, this emphasis on grow-yourown, food awareness, and food safety.”
Banking on that enthusiasm, the
Massachusetts Farm Bureau Federation, a membership organization of
6,500 farmers and growers, including
a collective of the commonwealth’s
“century farms” (farms that have been
owned and operated on the same land,
by the same families, for at least 100
years) has pledged $500,000 for the
center’s development. “This is for everyone,” says Hastings. “It puts everyone in together for the future of agriculture in this state.”
To complete the project, the Stockbridge School is relying on the enthusiasm of its loyal alumni base, as the
preservation and renovation of the
barn into a site for classes, exhibitions,
lectures, and conferences is estimated
to cost $4.5 million. Staffing the center
and outfitting it for practical hands-on
agricultural activities in the field will
require another $2 million.
To unite all the farms of Massachusetts might seem a big role for a former
horse barn. But this historic farming
structure might just have the chops:
“Many of our alums used to work in the
barn,” says Herbert. “They are excited
that agriculture is here to stay, here at
UMass Amherst.”

spring 2013

23

of Faculty

The Man Who
Cultivated Mass Aggie
Under the banner of “art for all,” Frank A. Waugh
energetically expanded the college’s horizons.

H

E ONCE encapsulated
his philosophy in a single
sentence: “To see beauty,
and especially to find it abundantly in
the daily environment, and to enjoy it
deeply—these [gifts] are the best in art,
in culture, and in life.”
Frank Albert Waugh arrived at Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1902
to head its Division of Horticulture.
Back then Mass Aggie had only two
divisions, horticulture and agriculture.
Both were strictly science-and-commerce-based, all about getting high
yields at low cost. The larger curriculum
embraced the humanities only in such
staid guises as rhetoric and German, and
the arts not at all.
Waugh wasted no time in chipping
away at that provincialism. By 1904 he
had founded the Department of Landscape Gardening, later renamed the
Department of Landscape Architecture.
Largely rooted in esthetics, it was only
the second of its kind anywhere. And all
of his courses, no matter how technical
their ostensible subject, helped cultivate
an appreciation of beauty.
Waugh’s methods were anything
but conventional. He’d take students
to some rustic brook, play his flute, and
ask them to judge how the music and
the brook’s murmur mingled. To jog
students out of their set ways of seeing
things, he’d take them on field trips during rainstorms or at night, or tell them
to bend down and look between their
knees at a scene, or have them lie on the

24

umass amherst

By John Sippel

ground to look up at snow falling.
Nor did he cast an eye only at nature.
He’d ask students which of a series of
neckties he donned was most attractive, which elements of a dinner setting
worked well together and didn’t, what
comic strip they liked best, or which of
a batch of paintings or Christmas cards
was most appealing—and in every case
the students had to say why.
In photographs Waugh invariably
seems tight-lipped and owlish behind his
round spectacles, but his students and
associates relished his immense energy,
sagacity, intellectual breadth, humor,
conviviality, and gift for conveying and
inspiring enthusiasm. His classes felt like
friendly gatherings. “He was a teacher
whose attitude lived with you for years,”
one of his students, Ruth A. Faulk
White ’29, would recall. “He brought
all of your senses to his teaching, to the
point where you weren’t just learning
about the subject but about life.”

B

ORN IN Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, in 1869, Frank A. Waugh
was profoundly shaped by the
joys and rigors of growing up on the
Kansas farm to which his family moved
when he was two years old. In 1891, he
received a bachelor of science degree
from Kansas State College in Manhattan
and began writing and editing for newspapers and other publications. In 1893
he married Alice Vail, a college classmate, and began teaching horticulture

at Oklahoma State Agricultural and Mechanical College. In 1895 Waugh moved
on to the University of Vermont’s State
Agricultural College. He became an authority on plum culture, evaluated and
promoted Vermont’s apple orchards,
studied enzymic activities and physiological constants in plant growth, and
launched the State Horticultural Society.
Waugh arrived at Mass Aggie
seven years later, with his and Alice’s
burgeoning clan in tow: Dan, Dorothy,
Fred, Esther, Albert, and Sidney were
born in metronomic two-year intervals
between 1894 and 1904. The campus
they knew, Dorothy Waugh would recall
in 1987, “still had the appearance of the
half-dozen or so wide farms which it so
recently had been.” It was, she noted,
“a world that some might look on as
limited, rural, and therefore pitifully
unsophisticated.” The bluff spirit of
the college’s earliest days endured, and
some professors were the targets of
student pranks and roughhousing.
Not Waugh. At a lean five feet, sevenand-a-half inches he wasn’t physically
imposing, yet somehow troublemakers steered clear of him. His western
demeanor may have had something
to do with it: for years legend insisted
that Waugh arrived on campus riding
a piebald mustang and wearing a red
bandanna and sheepskin chaps. Not at
all, he protested; yes, he’d had “a mousecolored pony, and to be sure I got a
stockman’s saddle from the west, for I
couldn’t use the woman’s saddle they

The Waugh family’s on-campus home. One observer called it “a small frame house that
changed its features like a chrysalis from year to year through the experimental landscaping
effects of Professor Waugh and his undergraduate landscape students.”

Waugh plays the flute beside Orient Brook in Pelham, Mass.,
in one of the hundreds of hand-colored lantern slides of his
own photographs he prepared for lectures and teaching. When
published in 1925 in a forestry magazine, this image bore the
caption “Flute and Brook Harmonize in a Duet.”

Frank A. Waugh in middle age.

Wilder Hall, built soon after Waugh’s arrival to house
the Division of Horticulture, in an early postcard.
Waugh played a key role in planning and siting the
building, one of the campus’s architectural gems.

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES

spring 2013

25

sell here. But you may get it down that
the rest of the yarn isn’t so.”
By whatever means, Waugh, as a
Boston Globe reporter noted in 1939,
“had a general way of riding herd on the

Waugh’s makeup kept steady company
with an artist, one never seen without
a bright boutonniere and a jaunty but
tasteful necktie.
And in the final analysis it was the
artist in Waugh that so
transformed the campus
and the lives of his students. As a pomologist
and horticulturist he nevTo foster a love of landscape,
er lost his command of
Waugh designed a series of exercises
and respect for science,
and as an orchard-owner
encouraging students to “see as
he showed cold-eyed
business acumen. Yet
much beauty as possible in a given
he could endorse Henry
Thoreau’s assertion that
stretch of familiar highway, to enjoy
well-placed, well-tended
these pictures to the utmost, [and] to
trees around a house
made for “a nobler husappraise them justly.”
bandry than the raising of
corn and potatoes.” And
he could argue that while
science was “the obsession of our age” whose
boys. They never put his carriage up on
application to gardening “may do very
the Drill Hall roof or corralled a goat in
well for the commercial production of
his classroom. His pungent personality
onions, or even of hothouse roses, …
had what it takes. Just to see him coming
the making of beautiful landscapes is
had a conciliatory effect.”
not science, but art, and if we are to unThat deference was even more rederstand it at all we must keep these two
markable given that the cowboy in
ideas separate.”

Thinking like that, of course, underlay his seminal work in landscape architecture: the curriculum for the department he created was widely emulated,
and Waugh is today honored as one of
the profession’s chief progenitors. But
behind all of his teaching lay a series of
interlinked concepts. As codified in his
1922 essay “Art for All,” they ran something like this:
American education is generally
weakest in art, which in his mind embraced “literature, poetry, music, pictures, sculpture, architecture, the drama, the movies, dancing, and everything
which ministers to the sense of beauty.”
The most accessible of those things is
the native landscape. An appreciation
of art can therefore best be cultivated
through “methods whereby the pupil
may study, analyze, compare, estimate,
and interpret this omnipresent beauty.”
Waugh accordingly designed a series of
exercises to encourage students to “see
as much beauty as possible in a given
stretch of familiar highway, to enjoy
these pictures to the utmost, [and] to
appraise them justly.”
He wanted to achieve all this,
however, within the context of a
utilitarian education. “The vocational
motive is the most vital one you can put

The Kansas farm on which Waugh grew up, shown in another of his lantern slides. A
connoisseur of landscapes of every variety, Waugh tirelessly extolled the glories of the
Connecticut River valley but could still write, “We learn to like olives, and we learn to
like Wagnerian music, and I have seen New Englanders who at first were disgusted with
the landscape of Kansas finally learn to like it as well as I do.”

26

umass amherst

into education,” he said. “It stirs people
more than any other. A man takes on
more culture when he keeps his touch
with the world.” He added, “It is easy to
hire teachers for the classical curriculum
that has been taught for 2,000 years.
But to get teachers who put poetry and
music into horticulture and agriculture
is much harder.”
Many students’ happiest memories
of Waugh centered on his home, a modest frame house on Stockbridge Road,
just north of Wilder Hall. Students and
others were always welcome, and the
Waughs held open houses on Wednesday afternoons.
At those sessions, standing before his
fireplace, Waugh played gramophone
records and offered casual commentary to encourage music appreciation.
“Instead of starting with a symphony
that they wouldn’t understand,” he explained, “I begin with hillbilly songs
they can enjoy. They rapidly learn to
go on to Mozart and Beethoven.” (If
by some chance they didn’t, he took it
philosophically: “It is better to love a
ragtime cakewalk honestly and with
one’s own heart,” he insisted, “than to
admire Chopin because someone says
one ought.”)
Waugh saw out his classroom days

teaching art appreciation within his
own department; the course stood as
the only one of its kind on campus until
1959, long after the school had become
Massachusetts State College and then
the University of Massachusetts. He approached the subject in much the same
way as he did music: “I begin with local
art of the Connecticut Valley instead of
with Botticelli. They know what I am
talking about. It is real from the start.”

N

OR DID his contributions to the
college end there. His was for
years the guiding eye in planning
the campus. He decided how buildings
should be sited and laid out and how
the grounds should be enhanced. And
before Waugh’s arrival, musical performances were limited to whatever was
dished out at glee-club recitals and Drill
Hall dances, but he originated a fine
arts series, in which he sometimes took
part as flutist and composer. He also arranged and contributed to the campus’s
first exhibitions of art and photography.
Then there were his other ventures:
his prodigious output of books and
magazine articles; his co-ownership of
the region’s largest apple orchard; his
flute playing and music composing; his

Waugh on the Landscape l
From The Landscape Beautiful (1910):

T

HE LANDSCAPE is not a show, to be seen and forgotten. It is the
environment in which we live. Out of it we draw breath and without
it there would be no breathing. Through it the sun sends us his heat, and
the moon her pale mysterious light. We walk in the landscape, we drink
of it; in it we lie, and move, and have our being. We go a mile, and the
landscape goes with us. We are born into it, and not even death nor any
other creature can separate us from it.
Yet even with its nearness and its persuasiveness, we disallow it.
We forget it. Or if we catch a glimpse of it in the mirror of temporary
sanity, we go away and straightway forget what manner of men we
are. We do not feel it, cherish it as we ought, cultivate its intimate
acquaintance, nor love it consciously and reasonably.

strong aptitude in photography and the
great passion of his final years, etching;
his energetic engagement in Amherst’s
social, political, and cultural life; his
mentoring of and professional advocacy for former students; his work with
the U.S. Forest Service and the Civilian
Conservation Corps; his designs for the
Kansas State and Oklahoma State campuses; his two years as an Army captain;
his work as an early conservationist and
his environmental activism (long before
it was called that) against such initiatives
as the Quabbin Reservoir.
The college, however, always came
first. And even when Waugh first arrived on campus, some students and
professors were peeved by the “Agricultural” in the college’s name. The effort
to transform the institution into Massachusetts State College and expand
its offerings in the arts and humanities
surged and ebbed for years. Waugh, it
goes without saying, was all in favor of
it, and when the change came, in 1931,
he could claim a good deal of the credit
for having laid its intellectual and pedagogic groundwork. When it was then
proposed that the college begin offering
bachelor of arts degrees, he again took
to the ramparts, strenuously countering
those who argued that the move would
represent a betrayal and dilution of the
college’s mission and divide the campus
into competing factions.
In 1938 the board of trustees finally
voted to award bachelor of arts degrees
and the campus became yet more amenable to the breadth of education Frank
Waugh championed. The next year,
however, he reached—reluctantly and
resentfully—the age of mandatory retirement. The tributes began flowing,
and they reached a new crescendo after Waugh’s death in 1943. Many were
handsome, but one seemed especially
apt: the landscape architect Albert D.
Taylor ’45Hon, one of Waugh’s many
gifted protégés, summed him up as “an
outstanding teacher and a most lovable
character.”
This article drew heavily on the master’s-degree
thesis on Waugh written by Joseph A. DiCarlo
Jr. ’67, ’73G, the introduction by Linda Flint
McClelland ’72, ’79G to the University of
Massachusetts Press’s 2007 reissue of Waugh’s
Book of Landscape Gardening, and the research
of Associate Professor Annaliese Bischoff of
UMass Amherst’s Department of Landscape
Architecture and Regional Planning.

spring 2013

27

JOHN SOLEM

of Building

BEAUTY,

CRAVINGS,
AND

VIRTUE

Our campus architecture
By Marla R. Miller and Max Page

EAUTIFUL HAS NOT always been the word
attached to the architecture of the University of
Massachusetts. Our goal is to do nothing less than
use that word proudly for the Amherst campus. We
find individual buildings and landscapes beautiful,
but also the century-and-a-half quest to provide
higher education for the commonwealthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s citizens.
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umass amherst

At left, Professor of Architecture and History Max Page and Professor of
History Marla R. Miller stand outside one of their favorite campus buildings,
the 1970 Murray D. Lincoln Campus Center, designed by Marcel Breuer.
This article is adapted from their book, University of Massachusetts Amherst:
An Architectural Tour (Princeton Architectural Press, 2013). The book relates the
history of the campus and includes five guided walks that encompass dozens
of buildings, landscapes, artworks, and memorials. Professors Miller and Page
are grateful to the many UMass colleagues, students, and alumni who shared
their insight, scholarship, time, and expertise in support of this project.

Photography by Bilyana Dimitrova

TO BE SURE, the appeal of the campus
is not in its uniformity of vision and
completeness of design. Visitors will not
confuse this place with Stanford University, whose core Romanesque and Spanish Mission-inspired buildings were
constructed within a few short years, or
Yale’s Gothic colleges, built all at once in
the midst of the Depression. Founded in
a state with more private colleges than
any other in the union, the University
of Massachusetts has been engaged in a
long debate in brick and steel and lots
of concrete about the appropriate image for a major public university. The
campus, both its glorious buildings and
its less-beloved ones, is part of a noble
story—perhaps the most noble story
we have—of the attempt to achieve the
vision Governor John A. Andrew announced to the legislature on January
9, 1863: “We should have a university
which would be worthy of the dream
of her fathers, the history of the state,
and the capacity of her people.” The
University of Massachusetts has spent
the last 150 years trying to figure out
what it means to be a public institution
of higher education. As the university
celebrates the beginning of its next 150
years, it will continue to ask what our
buildings should say to the commonwealth and to the nation.
There are a number of story lines
here, in what has been at times nothing short of a tragicomedy. First is the
interplay between the rural setting and
agricultural origins of the original campus and the sophistication of a modern
research institution. This is a campus
of contrasts, from Southwest’s highrise dormitories to Prexy’s Ridge and
its old-growth forest, and the 400-acre
Waugh Arboretum, which covers a good
portion of the campus. From the top of

The campus has been called a dictionary
of architecture. The Georgian Revival
French Hall, at right, contrasts with the
modern Fine Arts Center plaza.

the tallest building here you look down
upon fields not a quarter mile away that
have been cultivated for more than three
and a half centuries. In the shadow of
cutting-edge research that may one day
lead to bacteria-powered appliances is
the Stockbridge House (1728) where
farmers once debated the American
Revolution and a budding artist named
Daniel Chester French first started
sketching—on the walls of his home.
These contrasts speak to another
central theme of our story: dramatic
change. When the college opened its
doors in 1867, there were four faculty
members and 56 students; the population today stands at about 28,000 graduate and undergraduate students. It may
have taken several years after the establishment of the school in 1863 to build
its first buildings, but a century later

only two of the original buildings still
survived, and they too would soon fall.
The campus has gone through the ups
and downs of the economy and state
funding, shifting ideas of its multiple
missions, and changes in organization.
The most dramatic metamorphosis
came after World War II with the secondmost important act in public higher
education’s history (the first being the
Morrill Act of 1862): the passage of the
GI Bill (officially called the Servicemen’s
Readjustment Act) of 1944, which gave
millions of returning veterans and their
children the opportunity to attend college. The population of college students
soon tripled and the number of public
research universities quintupled (from
25 to 125) in a mere two decades. UMass
was, therefore, building to accommodate the tidal wave of students while
spring 2013

29

also trying to establish itself in a community of national research institutions.
Finally, there is the question of appreciation. It would be dishonest for
us—UMass faculty with an open affection for our university and its campus—
to fail to acknowledge that many others
disagree. Not long ago at least one online source conferred on UMass Amherst the dubious distinction of being
the second ugliest campus in the nation
(with Drexel University in Philadelphia
named the “winner”). As we began our
research, the director of student affairs
declared the architecture of the Southwest Residential Area to be “brutal.” Art
students have long complained about
the leaks in the Fine Arts Center. And
this is not a new feeling. Robert Campbell, architecture critic for the Boston
Globe, wrote in 1974 that the campus is
“a jumble of unrelated personal monuments that looks more like a world fairgrounds than a campus.”
Of course, much the same was said
of New York brownstones, beloved in
the nineteenth century, hated in the
early twentieth, and cherished again
toward the end of the millennium. Or
the red-brick homes of Boston, swept
aside in the 1950s to make way for the
modern era. Every style has had its day,
and usually more than one. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. But the
beholder’s eye changes over time, and
what was once ugly can become beautiful—just as it may become ugly once

From the top: the atrium of the 2009 Integrated Sciences Building; the 1957 Student
Union and more than 30 other campus structures, including many dormitories and
Skinner Hall, were designed by Louis W. Ross, Class of 1917; the 1973 W.E.B. Du Bois
Library, designed by Edward Durrell Stone, towers over campus.

30

umass amherst

again. For every observer who believes
that “these powerfully shaped buildings
have great visual interest—especially in
a strong sun that shows off their crisp
edges, stripped surfaces and Brobdingnagian geometry,” there is another who
finds them “drab and uninviting.”
The reactions to this architectural
landscape could make for an interesting
study in and of itself; the themes that
flow through the urban legends surrounding many of these buildings are
telling for the assumptions they reveal
about the history of this place. Stories
of malfunctioning structures (falling
bricks, mislaid steam pipes) often hinge
on notions of bungling managers who
failed to foresee obvious physical challenges, if not impossibilities, while narratives of second-rate or off-the-shelf
plans compete with others about arrogant architects unwilling to compromise
their aesthetic vision or condescend
to practicality. The voices we found in
the university archives confirmed none
of the urban legends repeated so often
around campus; instead, we saw how
each of these structures reflects complex long-term negotiations among an
array of disparate interests and concerns. How one assesses the outcomes
of those negotiations aside, the process
itself was rarely a simple one.
Whatever the opinion, one thing is
clear: the UMass campus boasts three
centuries of American buildings and
landscapes, including examples of significant works of architecture by some
of the most important architects and
architectural firms of their time. As
Arnold Friedmann, longtime historian
of the campus buildings, has said, “It is a
bit like a dictionary of architecture.”
In an age when the very idea of public institutions has been under attack,
many have gained a new appreciation
of the modern buildings of the past
50 years, built at the height of faith in
government. We have looked past the
chips that once fell from upper-story
bricks and out-of-service elevators to
stand in awe at the idealism of building the world’s tallest library, open to
anyone, 24 hours a day. We have found
ourselves willing to forgive the cracks
in the concrete of the Fine Arts Center
because we are moved by the decision
to ask one of the premier architects of
the day to design first-class art, music,
and theater spaces for the sons and

daughters of working men and women
of Massachusetts. We lament that the
state hasn’t been consistent, to say the
least, in its commitment to maintain its
flagship campus, but we still take pride
in the extraordinary constellation of
landscapes and buildings that attest to
the continued mission of the university.
The story of the UMass campus
since the mid-1970s has been a threepart symphony: building, neglect,
building. The massive expansion of the
1960s and 1970s was matched by two
decades of relative disinvestment. In recent years, UMass has been in a building
boom. There has been plenty to watch
as the land of this plateau, on the edge
of ancient Lake Hitchcock, has been dug
up and concrete foundations poured
like (almost) never before. A new studio arts building, a recreation center, a
marching band building, and a life science building have risen since 2008 and
a six-building residential honors college
complex, a new classroom building, and
a second science building will be complete within the next two years.
Unlike previous growth eras, when
the state and often the federal government footed the bill, this time it is the
campus that is largely paying for it, out
of its own operating budget. With little
room in those budgets for hiring the
biggest luminaries of the architecture
world, quality construction and cautious design have characterized many
of the more recent buildings. They
fulfill important functions and do not
offend. But few have lit up the architectural world or fired the imagination. On
the other hand, the urgent state of the
environment has put growing emphasis on sustainability, with the campus
constructing more energy-conscious
buildings than their predecessors. The
widely acclaimed permaculture garden
installed alongside Franklin Dining
Hall in many ways brings the campus
full circle, back to its origins in agricultural innovation and enterprise.
The debates about what UMass
should be and what its buildings should
say rage on. In each economic recession,
the old debate about how important
this campus is to the commonwealth’s
future comes back, Lazarus-like. The
pull of Massachusetts’s long tradition
of private schools, and past 40 years
of steadily growing skepticism toward
government investment, is written as

much in the cracks in buildings not well
maintained as it is in new workaday
campus buildings.
As we mark the sesquicentennial, the
campus is in the midst of another period of transformation, as a new campus plan moves toward implementation. While there are centuries of built
history (not to mention a millennium
of Native American history) on the site,
this is not a campus that has typically
cherished tradition and heritage with
regard to its built environment. Instead,
this campus has pursued change and
innovation.
Before long, the landscapes we know
today will again be altered. Someday,
for example, the boulevard that is Massachusetts Avenue will be gone and new
construction will enclose Haigis Mall.
Soon buildings will rise on present-day
parking lots. This is not to say that planners and designers had no respect for
the past at UMass, nor that members of
the university community are indifferent to the institution’s physical heritage.
But at UMass, the story is incomplete.
It invites debate. And that is not such a
bad thing for a university.

From the top: the colorful facade of
the 1993 Mullins Center; Hugh Stubbins
designed the 1966 Southwest Residential
Area with modern forms and bold lines;
alumni led the movement to build Memorial
Hall in 1921 to honor the war dead.

LOST UMASS

D

The fountain that once stood in front
of South College was installed in 1880
as a gift of the Class of 1882.

ID YOU KNOW the Old Chapel
used to be a library, the Blue Wall
was a bar, and Draper was a dining
hall? With help from UMass History
graduate student Sarah Marrs, students in Marla Miller’s Introduction
to Public History course researched
the stories of campus structures that
have been built, moved, repurposed,
and torn down. You can learn about
these vanished landscapes on the
website Lost UMass.
http://lostumass.omeka.net

of Change

The Boom Years

The campus comes of age in the 1960s.
By Katharine Greider

T

HE GROWTH OF UMASS
during the 1960s—in
terms of enrollment,
facilities, and budget—
was unprecedented in
its century of history and has not
been repeated in the half-century
that followed. A golden age of sorts,
this growth period also represented
a gargantuan undertaking. The
Baby Boomers burst the seams of
the University of Massachusetts,
dramatically increasing its size.
They also created a questioning,
outspoken youth culture that swept
the country and deeply marked the
university’s identity.
32

umass amherst

A growing middle class chooses college

T

HE BABY BOOM’S demographic bulge took place during a time
when Americans were sold on higher education as the way to a prosperous, civilized way of life. As one parent wrote to UMass president John
Lederle during a rather typical episode of late-1960s campus unrest, “I
realize you have quite a serious problem to solve. Never having attended
college, but always having the desire to and hoping my children could, I
say a prayer for you and wish you the very best of luck.”
While the state’s august private colleges limited their growth and
increasingly drew high-achieving students from around the country,
UMass strained to accommodate surging state-wide demand for an
affordable college education. Annual applications for a spot in the
freshman class spiked, from just over 5,000 in 1959 to more than 20,000
a decade later. Though many had to be turned away, enrollment grew
precipitously, nearly tripling in the decade leading up to 1972; during that
same 10 years, the ratio of college-age Massachusetts citizens attending
UMass itself climbed from one in 150 to one in 45. Even so, given the
admissions squeeze, the SAT scores of entering classes steadily rose.
The university crammed its physical plant to the rafters, admitting
“swing-shift freshmen”—those slightly less qualified—to attend in the
summer, then return in the spring semester, when enrollment naturally
declined through graduations and attrition. These hordes of young people picked their way across a campus pitted with freshly dug foundations.
UMass owned about 1.4 million square feet of building space in 1950,
rising to 2.9 million square feet in 1960. By 1970 the once bucolic cow college was covered by 7.2 million square feet of building space.
Every year the university brought on new faculty and other employees,
with the full-time instructional staff growing by double digits most years
of the 1960s; by 1972, faculty were one thousand strong.

A high new road

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES

D

ESPITE THE Commonwealth’s traditional neglect of public higher
education—a history stemming partly from its wealth of private
institutions that, not coincidentally, clustered near the seat of political
power in the east—UMass leadership of the 1960s had every intention
of creating an institution that was not just big, but top-tier. This period
saw the growth of its highly regarded engineering program, as well as the
introduction of stellar research and graduate programs in, for example,
computer and polymer sciences (prescient investments obviously). Indeed, the graduate school generally burgeoned, with a headcount of some
750 students in 1960 growing to 4,500 in 1970.
UMass was gamely upping the ante, increasing its scholarly profile and
output and by the close of the turbulent 1960s, it was a stimulating community of tens of thousands of people—a magnet that drew interesting
figures looking to instruct, entertain, or persuade. In 1968, the campus
enjoyed performances by Stan Getz, Stevie Wonder, and Simon and Garfunkel. Numerous speakers came to debate timely issues: Dick Gregory
spoke about racism and Black Power and Arthur Schlesinger, a former assistant to presidents Kennedy and Johnson, discussed the war in Vietnam.
Johnny Carson declined to discuss Vietnam, but he did argue against the
legalization of marijuana, which he deemed “psychologically addicting.”
All this growth would not have been possible without a truly massive
influx of funds. In the decade between 1962 and 1972, the UMass budget
ballooned 700 percent. President Lederle was an effective lobbyist, working with a state legislature whose stance toward the public university was
more than ordinarily beneficent during this period. He also raised money
from the federal government.
spring 2013

33

A different view

B

UT IT WAS the youth themselves who really set the agenda;
they swamped the campus, their sheer numbers shifting its
dynamics. “If teachers and administrators continue to retreat
before every onslaught by students, the entire educational system in this country will be jeopardized,” one indignant citizen
wrote John Lederle
in the 1960s. “Students come to college to be educated,
Within just a few
not to educate their
teachers.” But as the
years students had
years wore on, it
became clear these
students had a
traded in pencil skirts
distinctly different
view of things.
Within just a few
and tailored blazers
years students had
traded in pencil
for ragged blue jeans
skirts and tailored
blazers for ragged
blue jeans and
and fringe.
fringe. They were
“rapping”
about
racism, sexuality,
and the bloody toll
in Vietnam. The yearbooks took on a serious and even dark
cast, expressing a growing preoccupation, in this newly technological age, with how to maintain individuality in the collective—how to resist becoming, as Lederle himself put it, “a
‘machined’ product.”
With an alacrity that alarmed many of their elders, these
students changed the rules.
For all the years of the school’s history, for example, UMass
women (and female college students generally) had been unquestioningly subject to special curfews and dorm rules. In
May 1966 those archaic regulations were abolished.“In the fall,”
marveled the Boston Globe, “women students will be free to
come and go as they please.”
Just a few years later a novel “open house policy” in effect
removed restrictions against students
of the opposite sex socializing together at any hour they chose, not just in
common areas but also in their dorm
rooms. One student remarked, “For
the first time in my three years here,
the university has recognized the desperate need for privacy: privacy to
study, to talk, to cry—even to kiss—
without 16,000 people watching and/
or listening.”
Fast upon the heels of the “open”
single-sex residence hall came co-ed
dorms. Greenough was the first, the result of a student initiative
approved by the trustees in the fall of 1969. In the spring of
1970, 44 women moved in, occupying separate floors from
male residents. By the middle of that semester, 12 more student
proposals to take their dorms co-ed lay before UMass leaders.

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umass amherst

In 1971, the trustees removed rules excluding freshmen from
co-ed dorms and allowed mixed-sex floors. Although some
critics seethed, the zeitgeist was headed swiftly in the other
direction; soon co-ed dorms were the norm, and even co-ed
bathrooms appeared.

Getting together for change

S

TUDENTS OF the 1960s and 1970s were intent upon
rearranging a lot more of the world than just their
dormitories, and collective action became their tool. UMass
students spoke out against what they saw as unfair treatment of
particular faculty members; they protested underrepresentation
of African-American news in the Collegian; they agitated for
better lighting on campus and objected to fee increases and oncampus recruiting by certain corporations. Some thumbed their
noses at the academic enterprise itself. In 1969 one graduate,
voted a “distinguished senior” by the faculty, belittled his
accomplishments. “President of the Student Senate is very little,”
he said,“when I consider that I have never participated in a good
sit-in or disrupted even one speaker. . . . I could have done better.”
Some protests amounted to brawls or shout-downs, as
in February 1970 when former vice president Hubert H.
Humphrey was driven from the podium by yelling, stomping,
and marshmallow- and confetti-flinging activists—behavior
roundly condemned by the administration and much of the
student body as well. Other mass events were mere larks,
like the nude “streaking” that, at one point in the early 1970s,
became so routine that some streakers adopted gimmicks
like riding unicycles or carrying lit torches. “It’s better than
painting clenched fists on the buildings,” remarked former
president Lederle, who had just returned to his professorship
in political science.

Crucibles of an era

A

T THE CENTER of student mass action, however, were
the great moral issues of the age, which washed over the
UMass campus along with a massive wave of young students.
One of them was racial integration and the Civil Rights
movement. By the mid-1960s, with well
over 10,000 students at UMass, there
were perhaps three dozen AfricanAmerican students—more black students attended from Africa itself—and
just a handful of black faculty members. These faculty, including soon-tobe UMass chancellor Randolph Bromery and the noted sociologist William
Julius Wilson, joined forces to change
that. Armed with a grant from the Ford
Foundation, they went to urban areas
in Springfield and Boston to find and
woo minority students. By the fall of 1968 the Committee for
the Collegiate Education of Black Students (CCEBS) had enrolled, with plans to support and retain, 128 black students—
the institution’s first African-American community.
It was an uneasy community. The students—who came

largely from underperforming schools—were culturally differFeminism or “women’s lib” also emerged at UMass as the
ent, even from their black professors, and they were surroundratio of female enrollment at last began to rise, especially in
ed by white people who were curious about them and not unigraduate programs, with undergrad enrollment gradually apformly friendly. The African-American students all lived in the
proaching parity in the late 1970s. As late
Orchard Hill dorm complex, a policy that aimed to avoid isoas the fall of 1989, however, 577 tenured
lating them from one another. Within a few months of their arfull professors were male, but only 68
rival on campus in the fall of 1968, a “racial incident” (as it was
women shared that rank. An Index of the
labeled in President Lederle’s files) occurred that, while trouearly 1960s could jokingly refer to a wombling, helped galvanize the establishment of black cultural and
an student as “playmate of the month,”
academic programs. The incident: A handful of white students
but by the mid-1970s there were wellset upon a black youth visiting from a nearby community colattended pickets against pornography,
lege and his white host. The response: Black UMass students,
not to mention discussions that parsed
calling themselves the Afro-American Organization, presentgender stereotypes and urged the inclued a list of 21 demands to the administration. They included
sion of women of color and lesbians in
a public apology from UMass leaders, punishment for racial
the movement. The Everywoman’s Cenharassment, money for black student activities, a black studies
ter, one of the first of its kind, opened to
department, and the recruitment of more black students and
serve women’s needs and interests in 1972.
faculty. These weren’t new proposals, but the incident brought
Women’s athletics burgeoned on campus
them urgency and attenwith the late-1970s implementation of
tion; the administration
Title IX, a federal gender-equity law. “Now
responded with what the
they say, ‘That was good lacrosse or good
Afro-American Orgafield hockey.’ It’s not just confined to ‘that
nization called “honesty
was a good game—for girls,’” one sportsand sincerity.”
woman in the class of 1976 told the Index.
Within a few years,
Civil Rights and feminism, at UMass
black students had a soas at many institutions, initiated a more general breakdown
cial meeting place and
of the assumption that all human experience should conform
cultural center in New
to a single, privileged model. During the 1970s, the university
Africa House, as well as
began offering special services to veterans, students with disan energized new Afroabilities, bilingual and foreign students, and older students.
American Studies DeSuch reforms both stimulated and resulted from a larger,
partment staffed by facmore diverse student body drawn from a much broader geoulty with deep roots in
graphical range. By the mid-1960s, more than half of in-state
the Civil Rights movement, also housed in New Africa. Meanstudents came from the eastern part of the state. By the fall
while, CCEBS continued to recruit and foster the education of
of 1979, with a combined enrollment of undergraduate and
more black students, as well as Puerto Ricans, Native Amerigraduate students reaching 24,012, more than 3,000 came from
cans, and other minorities.
outside the commonwealth, and 576 came to Amherst from
The other front-and-center issue of the day was of course
abroad.
the fighting in Vietnam. Sharply contested at the highest levels
It was during and just following its dramatic growth periof American politics, the war profoundly affected college-age
od—a kind of adolescence, as one administrator remarked—
people because they were its soldiers. “I find it difficult to unthat free expression in a diverse community took root as a core
derstand,” Lederle wrote in response to one parent’s letter on
value at UMass. “The longstanding elitist pattern of higher
the open-house dorm policy, “why [students] can be asked to
education is crumbling,” remarked 1970s chancellor Randolph
fight in Vietnam but cannot be trusted to live responsibly in
Bromery. “We are seeking out the best minds among minorour dormitories.”
ity youth, the poor, the older, the handicapped, women, the
At one point the Collegian ran a feature called Conscripretrainable. . . . Our goal is a more responsive and meaningful
tion Corner that answered students’ questions about draft staintellectual community.”
tus and draft-board rules. It was the U.S.
incursion into Cambodia as well as the
killing by the National Guard of four Kent
his article is excerpted from UMass Rising: The
State students in the spring of 1970 that set
University of Massachusetts Amherst at 150, a
off the biggest anti-war demonstrations
lively well-illustrated history of the university on its
across the country—a national student
sesquicentennial, by Katharine Greider. The book will
“strike.” At UMass, the strike transformed
be available in May, and UMass Amherst students,
the campus into a kind of political teachparents, and alumni can order copies at a special
in but was peacefully carried out. That
discount price of $18 plus shipping. Call the UMass
same year, in response to student sentiPress distribution center at 800-537-5487, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m.
ment, the university dropped academic
to 7:00 p.m., or order online anytime at www.umass.edu/umpress/title/umasscredit for ROTC, an official course since
rising. Please use the promotion code “S150.”
the college’s founding.

T

spring 2013

35

of Friendships

Meet Me
After Class
I'm a junior journalism major from Succasunna, New
Jersey, a small town about 45 minutes from New York City.
I have family in Massachusetts and knew I wanted to go
to a bigger school, so UMass seemed like a good fit for me.
As soon as I moved into the Central Residential Area, I felt
encouraged in my photography by a community of artists,
writers, and learners.
At UMass, a student really has to try to not meet new people.
I'm incredibly thankful for everyone I’ve met through my classes
and dorms over the years; with so many different types of people
surrounding me, it is never too hard to find something new to do.
At this point, many of my friends and acquaintances have become
immune to the sound of a shutter; I've buzzed around them for
years now, clicking away at any opportunity. The students on these
.
pages are only a handful of the ones who inspire my photography,
who are always suggesting some new experience or honing
their crafts, and whose talents are nurtured by the intellectual
community at UMass Amherst.

Photographer Shaina

Mishkin ’14

By Shaina Mishkin ’14
To see more of
Shaina Mishkin’s photos and the work
of her fellow student photographer,
Zoe Mervine ’15, go to:
www.umass.edu/viewmass

David Bazzett ’14 plays
guitar atop Clark Hill.

Friends meet for brunch in Franklin Dining Commons.

36

umass amherst

Blaise Davi ’13 dyes her hair in
her Orchard Hill dorm room.

Dylan Lurvey ’14 slacklines.
Taisha Edouard ’15 in an
a cappella rehearsal with
The Vocal Suspects.

VEN THE far-sighted founders of Massachusetts
Agricultural College could not have envisioned the humble
college’s transformation into the largest public research institution in New England and the flagship of the five-campus
University of Massachusetts system. Although such innovations were remote from their reality, they would likely be fascinated by distance education, technology-based learning, and
a library that stands 26 stories tall. As participants in one of
the greatest expansions of higher education, they would surely
cheer for today’s 28,000 graduate and undergraduate students
and 1,121 faculty members keeping alive the mission of a landgrant university.
If 150 years introduces astounding changes, how sweeping
will changes be in another 50 years when UMass Amherst celebrates its bicentennial? A campus planner, two college deans,
and two professors from the School of Education considered
that question. Though their predictions for higher education
in 2063 differed, all believe that UMass Amherst, as a residential university with a vibrant graduate school, will have staying power. They told us that undoubtedly the landscape would
change: buildings will be razed and new ones—with solar
rooftop panels—will take their place.
Traditional 18-to-22-year-old residential students will
continue to be the mainstay of undergraduate education. But

By Judith B. Cameron ’75
Photos by John Solem
those young adults will be joined by an increasing number
of non-traditional and international students enrolled in online courses or degree programs. Enrollment of international
graduate students will continue to rise with China, India, and
Brazil sending the largest numbers of students seeking master’s
degrees or PhDs. The role of faculty and how they teach will be
revamped, driven by technology, new media, and the needs of
21st century students. The traditional lecture may become a
relic and be replaced with different pedagogy.
“The future of our campus depends on us not just asking
the most meaningful research questions but on asking meaningful questions about what it is to be an educator,” says Joseph
B. Berger, associate dean and professor of educational policy
and research and administration at the School of Education.
One dominant question, he says, will revolve around affordability and access to a college education. “Higher education
as currently configured has some sustainability issues. The
elasticity of the cost has just about reached its breaking point,”
explains Berger.
The pressure to rein in cost will reshape higher education.
Berger says colleges and universities may no longer be able to
offer “all things to all people” but may look to find new ways to
offer students a smorgasbord of courses through cooperative
agreements. These changes may create a new degree structure,

A New Master Plan

A

S A LARGE public research institution, UMass Amherst
also is a small city with a population of 40,000, 13,650
parking spaces, 98 academic buildings, and an array of
architectural styles constructed on 1,450 acres. A campus
master plan, adopted in April, will guide growth and
development for the next several decades.
By 2063, at the UMass Amherst bicentennial, experts
predict that the campus core will be a more robust living
and learning center. The entrances to the campus will be
unrecognizable. Massachusetts and Commonwealth avenues
will both be narrowed from four to two lanes, ending the
separation of the Southwest Residential Area, Mullins Center,
and athletic fields from the campus core. Designated historic
buildings will be protected from the wrecking ball but may
receive additions that come with the installation of amenities

38

umass amherst

such as air conditioning and accessibility features. South
College, built in in 1885 and the oldest brick building on
campus, and the Student Union, constructed in 1957, will be
remodeled and expanded. Slated for demolition are Bartlett
Hall, the ROTC building, and former student housing that has
been converted to administrative buildings: Hills, Berkshire,
Middlesex, and Hampshire.
In the end, the campus will be environmentally sustainable
and have a more human scale, says Dennis Swinford, director of
campus planning. He says the campus pond will continue to be a
favorite spot for students; plans are to further enhance the pond
with a bridge over its center. “But I hope that with the changes
students will have a lot more favorite spots,” says Swinford.
To see the master plan, go to the Campus Planning website:
www.umass.edu/cp

with the university or college that actually grants the degree
ready to accept credits from other institutions of higher education. “You are going to see a lot more—and the term being
used is—stackable credits. That’s where you earn different certificates and you stack them to get a degree,” explains Berger.
College credits in the future also may come from MOOCs
(massive open online courses), though no one can say with
certainty if MOOCs are simply fashionable with no means to
be financially viable in the long term. MOOCs are web-based
courses aimed at large-scale participation having neither eligibility requirements for enrollment nor credit for completing
the course. Nonetheless, several elite institutions offer MOOCs.
Berger thinks MOOCs may grow in popularity as institutions
figure out a way for MOOCs to pay their way. He says MOOCs
and other innovations may help address financial challenges
but may also serve as ways to protect the core educational mission by working with students in more focused ways. John J.
McCarthy, dean of the graduate school, says MOOCs will not
transform education. “They are another dot-com. Everyone
jumps in because they have a good idea and the one idea they
are lacking is how to make money on MOOCs,” he says.
Regardless of the means of earning college credit, Steve
Goodwin, dean of the College of Natural Sciences, says that the
bachelor’s degree will not lose its coveted status. “I think the
bachelor’s degree will be just as important as ever. But I think
there will be many more non-traditional students who will take
advantage of higher education,” he notes. From his perspective
as dean of the graduate school, McCarthy predicts a blurring of
lines between undergraduate and graduate education. He cites
the comparatively new five-year programs that lead to bachelor’s and master’s degrees as examples of merged programs.
The study of liberal arts as part of the general education
requirements will not give way to pressure to meet specific labor market demands. McCarthy says that in the future UMass
Amherst will provide a broad-based, interdisciplinary educa-

tion, not one narrowly focused on specific jobs skills. “We can’t
predict the exact nature of jobs skills in the future. But we do
know that future workers will need skills in writing, communication, working in teams, and working with people who come
from other backgrounds,” says McCarthy.
Benita J. Barnes, School of Education associate professor,
agrees that communication and analytical skills and the ability to work with diverse people are critical now and will be in
the future, too. But she worries that high tuition costs mean that
earnings from employment will define whether earning a degree
is worthwhile. “I’m not certain that people will be interested in
being educated or being a learned person. People want employment and will use higher education as the vehicle to a job,” says
Barnes. She also foresees the trend of the student as a consumer
in the higher education marketplace will not end. For example,
the student/consumer has demanded round-the-clock access
to a variety of services and many universities are complying. “I
think in the future we will see more of that,” notes Barnes.
As UMass Amherst evolves, the role of faculty will undergo a
metamorphosis. “I think faculty will see their job as much more
of a partnership with students,” says Goodwin. He says information will be exchanged through technology rather than by
way of the traditional lecture. “But a lot of knowledge creation
and synthesis of information will get done in face-to-face encounters,” he says. In the future, UMass Amherst, as a research
engine, will continue to be a significant contributor in unlocking scientific mysteries and better comprehending the human
condition, says McCarthy. That role will become even more
prominent as the private sector devotes itself exclusively to applied research. “Pure research has become the province of universities and I don’t expect that to change very much,” he says.
And the 56-member inaugural class of Mass Aggie and its
four faculty members would also agree that research is the domain of universities—in particular egalitarian public research
universities.
spring 2013

39

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

UMass People

Lotta’s Legacy:
Entertainer Funds
Scholarships

F

OR NINE DECADES, hundreds
of students studying agriculture at
UMass Amherst have received thousands of dollars in scholarships from
an unlikely source: a popular vaudevillian named Charlotte “Lotta” Crabtree.
When she died in Boston at age 77 in
1924, her will named seven charities
as beneficiaries of her multi-million
dollar estate. The largest bequest was
to Massachusetts Agricultural College,
now UMass Amherst, to encourage the
“intelligent and active promotion of
agricultural pursuits.”
Campus historians have found no
link between Crabtree’s largesse and
UMass Amherst. They speculate that
a matter of the heart with a college
official led to the gift. Recognizing
Crabtree’s impact, the campus in 1953
named a house in the Northeast Residential Area, constructed to accommodate the growing number of women
students, after the stage performer.
The other houses honor accomplished
academic women who influenced life
on campus.
Crabtree was known as the darling
of the California Gold Rush, when as a
young child she danced for miners who
paid her with gold nuggets and coins.
Her trademark was smoking thinly
rolled black cigars. A shrewd businesswoman, she was the highest paid performer of her time. Although her story
may be forgotten, her philanthropy has
had a profound impact. In the last eight
years, $1.4 million in Lotta Crabtree
scholarships have been awarded to
UMass Amherst students.
—Judith B. Cameron ’75

40

umass amherst

Outstanding in His Field

M

ASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE granted just
eight graduate degrees in 1917. One of
those diplomas was hard-earned by a
most unusual student, Satwaji Gundoji Mutkekar, the first Indian-born
student to enroll at the college.
Mutkekar was recruited by Howard
L. Knight, a 1902 MAC graduate who
became a professor at the agricultural
college in Puna, India. There he met
Mutkekar, who worked for the Bombay
government’s agricultural department.
Impressed by the young man’s abilities,
Knight arranged for Mutkekar to study
at his alma mater. Mutkekar arrived in
Amherst in June 1914 and worked on
a farm for the summer before beginning his graduate studies. He worked
his way through MAC, boarded near
campus, and wrote a master’s thesis on
crop rotation.
The 1918 Index says of him: “To
all those with whom he has come in
contact he has shown himself an ardent
worker and on the whole a man whom
MAC can point out with pride as one
of her graduates.” Mutkekar pursued
his PhD in microbiology in absentia;
presumably he returned to India to
implement the latest crop rotation
practices.
Mutkekar blazed a path that is now
well worn. This past fall, 421 students,
or 38 percent of the incoming graduate

—Patricia Sullivan

From Roister Doister to
Grande Dame

F

ROM A STINT in the extracurricular performance troupe the Roister
Doisters through a fundamental role in
creating the Department of Theater in
1973, Doris Abramson’s career traces
the history of theater at UMass.
One would never guess from
Abramson’s famously rounded, patrician accent—on exhibit not only to
her classes or actors in the productions
she directed, but also at her readings of
Emily Dickinson—that her father had
been the first janitor of Memorial Hall,
and that she learned her way around
campus among his brooms and mops.
Abramson ’49 arrived as an undergraduate on campus in 1942. She
left to earn her master’s from Smith
and her PhD from Columbia, returning to UMass as a faculty member in
1952. During the time drama was still
being taught only through the English
and Speech departments, Abramson
became a respected professor of
theater history and oral interpretation
of literature. She was instrumental in
envisioning, structuring, and founding
the Department of Theater in 1973.
When her book Negro Playwrights
in the American Theater was published
in 1969, it was the first on its topic,
establishing Abramson as an eminent
scholar and leading the way for a surge

of ethnic studies. Abramson was also a
steadfast advocate of women playwrights and a mentor to students who
would go on to influence the theater
world in their own right, such as playwright Constance Congdon ’82MFA.
Always a pioneer, she wed her longtime partner, Dorothy Johnson, when
Massachusetts changed its marriage
laws in 2004.
Abramson remained involved with
the department until the end of her life
in 2008. The Department of Theater’s
current season, focusing on the work of
female dramatists, is in her honor.
—Laura Marjorie Miller

Bullock Takes Charge

I

N 1904 the Massachusetts Agricultural College made collegiate sports
history when the athletic board scraped
together $251 and hired Matthew W.
Bullock, a star athlete in track and football at Dartmouth, to coach its football
team. Bullock was the first African
American to play football at Dartmouth and the first African American
to be named head football coach at
a predominantly white college in the
United States. It is believed that he was
one of the first salaried head football
coaches in America as well.
The son of slaves, Bullock was born
in North Carolina in 1881 and moved
with his family to Massachusetts at
age eight. He excelled as a student and
athlete in Boston public schools and at
Everett High School. After graduating
from Dartmouth in 1904, he used his
coaching earnings to study at Harvard
Law School, from which he graduated in 1907. MAC was
unable to pay him after
his initial season, but he
was rehired in 1907 and
1908, compiling a threeyear record of 13-8-5.
The yearbook The Index
said of the 1904 season:
“Mr. Matthew Bullock of
Dartmouth took charge
of the team, and with the
hardest schedule which
we have ever played has
developed one of the best

teams the college has ever put upon the
gridiron.”
The MAC newspaper, the College
Signal, wrote of Bullock: “A student of
football and a fine conditioner of men,
he put his heart and soul into the task
and throughout the season had the
team ‘coming’.”
After leaving MAC, Bullock taught
and coached at Morehouse College
in Atlanta, became dean of what is
now Alabama A&M University, and
practiced law in Georgia. He returned
to Massachusetts after World War I
spring 2013

41

COURTESY OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE LIBRARY

class, were international students and
India is predicted to surpass China as
the country sending the most graduate
students to UMass Amherst.

to practice law and continue a career
in public service. After an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the state senate, he
was executive secretary to the Boston
Urban League, special assistant attorney general for Massachusetts, and a
member of the state board of parole.

tion in 1937 and later retired to Arizona with her husband, Curry Hicks, the
indefatigable, future-thinking head of
the department of physical education
from 1911 to 1949 for whom Curry
Hicks Physical Education Building was
named.

—Robert Lindquist

—Laura Marjorie Miller

A Modern Woman

The Nature Guide’s Guide

A

W

42

umass amherst

ILLIAM GOULD VINAL passionately believed that outdoor
recreation promotes physical, psychological, and spiritual health and
encourages a more humane, enlightened democracy. By the time he came
to Massachusetts State College in 1937
to establish its Nature Guide School,
he had already logged three decades
as a pioneer in nature education. He
taught conservation, outdoor leadership, nature recreation, and nature
guiding, and took regular field trips to
introduce his students to the glories of
the great outdoors.
Vinal’s spirit shines through those
of his papers housed in the University
Archives, especially the chatty, quirky
Nature Guide Newsletter he self-published between 1935 and his retirement
in 1951. These mimeographed missives

—John Sippel

Students in the Class of 1939 rehearse a Hungarian dance.

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES

LTHOUGH THE FIRST women’s
physical education classes at
Massachusetts Agricultural College
involved “Indian club swinging” and
uniforms of blouses, bloomers, and
stockings with sneakers, the program
was anything but quaint.
When Adeline Hicks established
the physical education program for
women at MAC
in 1917, she had
to make do with
whatever facilities the college
had available for
her, sometimes
without dressing
rooms for her
students. Despite, or maybe
because of that,
she developed
an innovative program that expanded
as the number of female students grew.
To the initial curriculum of military-style drills, skating on the campus
pond, and hiking the neighboring hills,
Hicks added folk and national dance,
as well as modern dance, which was
just making its debut in the U.S. She
was one of the earliest exponents of
modern dance in a physical education curriculum, and her lesson plans
document sophisticated experiments in
tension, movement, and form.
Eventually, and with Hicks’s
championing, the college recognized
the need for dedicated spaces. Hicks
supervised the renovation of the Drill
Hall into a women’s gymnasium in
1931, and the opening of a new athletic
field for women in 1936.
She became a full member of the
faculty in 1921, and physical director
for women in 1927. She left her posi-

show “Cap’n Bill,” as he liked being
called, doing his utmost to sustain
and encourage the community of his
former students in their work as nature
counselors, ranger
naturalists, and directors of camps,
playgrounds, teen
centers, and children’s museums.
He endlessly spurs
them on to do
everything they
can to promote
progressive social
attitudes and
honor the essential humanity of
the children with
whom they work.
Vinal also made space to bristle at
those who belittled such work. “Yep!”
he wrote in one characteristic outburst.
“Old-fashioned as it may sound, there
are a few college students who are
interested in general natural history
out-of-doors. They do not choose to go
up a narrow canyon of specialization
to become so lopsided that they cannot
even talk to each other. One object of
nature education is to make not a brain
trust, but a human being.”

UMass Amherst

ALUMNI
ASSOCIATION

Mark Your
Calendar

Alumni
Association
Annual
Assembly

ALUMNI weekend
AprIL 26–28, 2013

Saturday, April 27, 2013
9:00 a.m.
Student Union Ballroom

Be a part of the 150th anniversary celebrations in 2013
Reconnect with friends, tour buildings,
learn about cutting-edge research and more!

Visit UMassAlumni.com
for more information

For more information visit
UMassAlumni.com/alumni-weekend
or call 800.456.UMASS

“Thank you for the support and
added learning experiences you
have provided me through your
Alumni Association membership.”
—Ann Bergeron, Class of 2013

Membership funds Alumni Association
scholarships, career workshops and leadership
training that supports UMass Amherst students.
Please add to your membership in 2013 to help
more students learn and grow!

ROM THE LARGE WINDOWS of his office in the historic
East Experiment Station, Bruce Wilcox, director of the
University of Massachusetts Press, has an enviable broad view
of campus. From here, he takes the long view of academic
publishing. “Fifty years from now,” he says, “I expect our focus
will still be on the quality of the work we publish.”
As the press celebrates the 50th anniversary of its 1963
founding, it could be easy for Wilcox to be distracted from
that long view by the technological leaps and budgetary
challenges transforming publishing. Looking back on his 30
years as director of the press, he takes pride in having recruited
an “absolutely first-rate” staff. Together they have developed
a highly cost-efficient operation, embraced the digital
revolution, and forged a number of strategic partnerships.
Despite all this, during the press’s golden anniversary year,
the minds of the eight employees will remain squarely on the
content of the 40 or so books they publish annually. “It’s the
substance that matters most, not the means of delivery,” says
Wilcox. “We find the best manuscripts we can and work hard
to publish them well.”
“Publishing well” these days means making expertly edited
books available as e-books and on-demand as well as in
beautifully designed paper and ink editions. UMass Press has
also begun to put supplementary materials online on an openaccess basis.
The University of Massachusetts Press has always been

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umass amherst

enmeshed in the scholarly life of the campus, publishing many
faculty authors. “As a public university, one of our missions is
to create and disseminate authoritative, enduring knowledge,”
says Maria Tymoczko, professor of languages, literature, and
culture, and chair of the press’s editorial board. “Many of our
publications either establish UMass as a leader in the field or
contribute to our overall scholarly standing.”
“Carrying the name and the work of the university to the
wider public is an essential part of our land-grant mission,”
explains Wilcox. Books that bear the UMass Press imprint go
through a rigorous selection and editing process, including
peer and faculty reviews. The press publishes books for both
academic and general readers and has developed specialties
in such areas as African American studies, Cold War studies,
public history, and Native Americans of the Northeast.
In addition, UMass Press publishes a select list of fiction
and poetry through its Juniper literary prizes. Occasionally,
a book will become a startling surprise. The press’s all-time
fiction best seller is David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide. Since its
2008 publication it has been published in 22 foreign editions
and sold more than 200,000 copies.
“One of the hallmarks of a great research university is
a vigorous program of scholarly publishing,” says Wilcox.
At its 50th anniversary, with more than 1,000 titles in print,
2 million volumes sold, and more coming, the University of
Massachusetts Press is vigorous indeed.
—Patricia Sullivan

Arthur Asa Berger ’54,
Theorizing Tourism: Analyzing
Iconic Destinations (Left Coast
Press) and Media, Myth, and
Society (Palgrave Macmillan).
Arthur Asa Berger has authored
or edited more than 75 books
on media, popular culture,
social theory, humor,
and tourism.
Joyce (Duval) Prince ’56, ’74G,
The Ghost of Luis Munoz and
The Day of the Dead (Laredo
Publishing). Told in English
and Spanish, this is the story
of a young boy discovering his
family and cultural heritage.
Laurence Pringle ’61G, Ice!
The Amazing History of the Ice
Business (Calkins Creek). The
author, who has written more
than 100 books for children
and young adults, presents the
story of harvesting, storage, and
delivery of ice in the 1800s in
this abundantly illustrated book
for young readers.
John Brown Childs ’64,
Indigeneity, Collected Essays
(New Pacific Press). Co-edited
with Guillermo Delgado-P,
this book focuses on the global
indigenous peoples’ movement.
Jack Singer ’65, The Teacher’s
Ultimate Stress Mastery Guide
(Corwin Press). Shows teachers
how to build resilience and deal
with the challenges of teaching.
Richard Henneberry ’66G,
’69PhD, A Daydreamer’s
Digest: Tales from the Berkshires
(Daydreamer Press). Whimsical
and entertaining essays and
short stories.
Nadine Gallo ’67, ’77G,
Impetuous Heart (Levellers
Press). Based on her mother’s

experiences, Gallo writes about
a girl growing up in Kerry
during the 1916 rebellion.
Lloyd Bonfield ’71, Devising,
Dying and Dispute: Probate
Litigation in Early Modern
England (Ashgate Publishing
Company).
Jim Lavrakas ’74, Snap
Decisions: My 30 Years as an
Alaska News Photographer (Far
North Press). The Pulitzer Prize
winner takes us on a largerthan-life photo journey through
Alaska, seeing nature, weird
fish, and the Iditarod; meeting
Alaska Natives in traditional
dress, governors, and street
people.
John Robert Browne
’75EdD, Walking the Equity
Talk: A Guide for Culturally
Courageous Leadership in School
Communities (Corwin Press).
Sound strategies for making
sure all students have a realistic
chance of realizing their dreams.
Barbara Larrivee ’76EdD,
Cultivating Teacher Renewal:
Guarding Against Stress and
Burnout (R&L Education). This
new book will help teachers
limit their stress and avoid
burnout.
Kathleen (Hynek) Dillon ’67,
’68G, ’76PhD, has released two
books: Hamburger Syndrome, a
Story of Adult Autism, written
under the pseudonym Kascia
Hanska, and Living With
Autism, the Parents’ Stories
(Parkway Publishers, Inc.).
Harvey Simon ’79G, The
Madman Theory: An Alternate
History Novel of the Cuban
Missile Crisis (Rosemoor Press).
A former national security

analyst at Harvard University
explores the scenario of what
would have happened if Nixon
had won the 1960 presidential
election.
Julie (Butterfield) ’80 and Jack
Cavacco ’82 teamed up to write
and illustrate My Worst Best
Friend and My Worst Best Friend
Does It Again (Black and White
Press), books written to help
young students with reading
delays improve their skills.
Rudolph Rosen ’81PhD, Money
for the Cause: A Complete Guide
to Event Fundraising (Texas
A&M University Press). Veteran
nonprofit executive director lays
out field-tested approaches that
have helped him raise money
for environmental conservation.
Sarah Van Arsdale ’82, Grand
Isle: A Novel (State University
Press of New York). A tragedy
in early June sets off a cascade
of deception for the summer
people from Manhattan and the
local teens on Grand Isle.
Jason Rubin ’85, The Grave
and the Gay (VantagePoint
Publishing). Based on the
English folk ballad “Matty
Groves,” this first novel centers
on love triangles leading to an
explosive climax.
Ellen Garvey ’86G, Writing with
Scissors: American Scrapbooks
from the Civil War to the Harlem
Renaissance (Oxford University
Press). An insight into what
people in the nineteenth
century read, and how they
managed their information
overload.
Russell Powell ’86, America’s
Apple (Brook Hollow Press).
A comprehensive look at the

Stories by Julie Cavacco

nation’s apple industry, past,
present, and future.
Kevin “Gig” Wailgum ’86,
A Visit From Santa Clops or
The Fright Before Christmas
(Wailgum Art Yarns). In this
holiday picture book, the oneeyed cousin of Kris Kringle
stops by a sleeping family’s
house on Christmas Eve.
Michelle Marchetti Coughlin
’87, One Colonial Woman’s
World: The Life and Writings
of Mehetabel Chandler Coit
(University of Massachusetts
Press). A diary begun at age 15
and continued until the author
is in her seventies, may be the
earliest surviving diary of an
American woman.
Pete Winiarski ’89, Act Now! A
Daily Action Log for Achieving
Your Goals in 90 Days. (Win
Publishing, LLC). For anyone
who would like to boost his or
her productivity in any, or every,
facet of life.
Ana Martínez-Alemán ’92EdD,
Accountability, Pragmatic
Aims, and the American
University (Routledge).
Reveals the tensions between
the democratic character of
the university—qualities that
may seem irreconcilable with
accountability metrics—and
the corporate or managerial
economies of modern American
universities.
John J. Wall ’92, B2B Marketing
Confessions (Lulu.com). Listen
to the confessions of an insider
to learn how marketing affects
every step of the customer life
cycle.
Martin Comack ’99G, Wild
Socialism: Workers Councils

Stories by Julie Cavacco
Illustrations by Jack Cavacco

Illustrations by Jack Cavacco

Bookmarks includes a selected list of new titles of general interest by alumni and faculty authors.
To have your book considered, contact umassmag@admin.umass.edu.

in Revolutionary Berlin, 1918-21
(University Press of America).
Examines the rise, development, and
decline of revolutionary councils of
industrial workers in Berlin at the end
of the First World War.

Andrew Lopenzina ’99 Red Ink: Native
Americans Picking Up the Pen in the
Colonial Period (State University of
New York Press). The Native peoples of
colonial New England were surprisingly
quick to grasp the practical functions of
Western literacy.

Jacob Walker ’10 and Robert Cox,
history professor and head of the
UMass Amherst special collections,
Massachusetts Cranberry Culture: A
History from Bog to Table (The History
Press). For centuries, this tart fruit, a
staple in the Yankee diet since before it
was domesticated, has reigned over the
heartland of Massachusetts.

Katherine Baird ’00PhD, Trapped in
Mediocrity: Why Our Schools Aren’t
World-Class and What We Can Do
About It (Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers). Carefully examines each
factor that has led to the current state
of education and then spells out how a
combination of policies will weaken the
forces that keep our schools mediocre
and instead make them ones worth
copying.
Susan Steinberg ’00G, Spectacle
(Graywolf Press). These stories center
on girls and women navigating through
precarious social situations that are
complicated by the spectacle of being
female in the modern world.
Dawn Daria ’01G, Grounded For Good
(Flow Circus, Inc.). Will Derek finally
be able to prove to his parents that
he’s more than just a trouble maker?
Moonbeam Award gold medal winner
for “Best First Book – Chapter Book.”
Nancy Frazier ’95G, ’04PhD, I, Lobster:
A Crustacean Odyssey (University
of New Hampshire Press). A quirky,
charming, and weirdly fascinating
cultural history of lobster in myth, art,
literature, and cuisine.
Kent Hartman ’04G, The Wrecking
Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and
Roll’s Best-Kept Secret (Thomas Dunne
Books). Tells the collective, behindthe-scenes stories of the artists who
dominated Top 40 radio during the
most exciting time in American popular
culture.
Charles Levi Nielsen ’06, Henry Gets
Moving (SportsMed Press). Chaz
Nielsen and Pierre Rouzeir, MD, a
University Health Services physician,
have co-authored a bilingual (Spanish/
English) children’s book that promotes
healthful habits for children.

46

umass amherst

Eesha Williams ’12G, Good News: Local
Journalism That Made a Difference
(Amazon Digital Services, Inc.).
Explores the relationship between the
press and public participation in social
change at the local level in recent U.S.
history.
Christa Parravani ’12G, Her: A Memoir
(Henry Holt and Co.). Beautifully
written, mesmerizingly rich and true,
Christa Parravani’s account of being
left, one half of a whole, by the death of
her identical twin sister Cara ’07G, and
of her desperate, ultimately triumphant
struggle for survival.
Robert Christensen, emeritus
professor of resource economics,
Gaylord Goose (Peppertree Press). A fun
story of a young Canada Goose who
doesn’t want to fly south for the winter
and the adventures he has as winter
comes to his home pond in Maine.

Laura Lovett, associate professor of
history, When We Were Free to Be:
Looking Back at the Children’s Classic
and the Difference it Made (University
of North Carolina Press). Thirty-two
contributors explore the creation and
legacy of Free to Be . . . You and Me,
marking the fortieth anniversary of
the ground-breaking children’s record,
book, and TV show that inspired girls
and boys to challenge stereotypes, value
cooperation, and respect diversity.

Atlantic Beach, FL

Ronald Story, emeritus professor
of history, Jonathan Edwards and
the Gospel of Love (University of
Massachusetts Press). A fundamentally
different view of Edwards, revealing
a profoundly social minister who
preached a gospel of charity and
community bound by love.

OBSERVED AN INTERESTING subculture during
my many years at UMass—squirrels hauling cheese
pizza up trees, crows softening bagels in puddles,
sparrows engaged in lively group discussions—life
playing out on different levels. But nothing compared to
the cats secretly living on campus. Few people were aware
they existed or knew the saga of their lives. I used to be
one of them.
Cats have always been part of UMass history as
mousers in the barns. As the barns disappeared, the
cats kept multiplying, migrating to new locations. A
community of ferals—cats raised without human contact
and fearful of people—took root and thrived, blending
into the campus landscape. From the cats’ perspective,
survival depended on being unnoticed.
On a quiet August night in 1991 I spotted two tomcats
rummaging in a trash bin. They glared at my intrusion,
incensed by my gall, signaling me to scram. I backed off,
curious to know their story. The next day a custodian told
me “there are lots of wild cats around here,” adding “they
know how to take care of themselves.” But now that I knew, I
couldn’t look the other way.
So began my 16-year journey inside the hidden world
of the UMass cats. It started by leaving food at the trash
bin and evolved into feeding 55 cats, getting them spayed
and vaccinated, and becoming a member of their tribe. The
majority resided along what I called the “cat corridor”—
from the old horse barn near Grinnell, past Tobin, Bartlett,
and Curry Hicks, to Munson Annex.
Their leader was “the Dadcat,” who regarded UMass as
his personal property, his mastery of buildings and grounds
unparalleled. Initially he viewed me as a dippy woman; I saw
him as a guy coarsened by a tough life. Later we’d see things
differently.
I discovered he lived behind Munson Annex with his wife,
Ashes, nine children, and another litter on the way. When
we first met, none of us knew what to do. Equipped with cat
food, I laid out a Vegas-size buffet on paper plates. Ashes
studied my face intensely, plumbing the depths of my soul.
She concluded the cats didn’t need to run from me.
MARIE PHILLIPS

Marie Phillips with Pumpkin, who
was born nearly 19 years ago in the
stone wall by Memorial Hall.

Every night thereafter I brought dinner at sunset then
sat on a brick pile nearby. To them I was mystifying, a stray
human out of the thousands surrounding them, electing
to join their world in the weeds and shadows. I considered
myself a guest in their home and was deferential and
respectful. Entering their space was like visiting a foreign
land and I immersed myself in their culture rather than
foisting mine on them.
Soon I had a regular route, feeding and befriending the
whole community, often crossing paths with the Dadcat on
his evening rounds. Each cat was a fascinating individual.
Many were major characters, like Tippie and Tyler, twin
girls busily hatching ideas to shock or amuse me; Buddy, an
unassuming widower; and the dashing Moustache. There
was the love story of Ashes and the Dadcat. At times the
UMass campus seemed to me like the scenery in a play with
the cats holding center stage.
I ended my nights sitting with Ashes as traffic hummed
around the campus periphery, the band practiced, snow
fell, a robin announced day’s end with a gentle song. No
judgment, no demands. It was an oasis.
We measured the passing of time in commencements.
Yet even in the transience of academe there was a rhythm
to life that appealed to the cats’ need for predictability, and
certainly this was their home.
The cats are gone now but their memory remains. And
if you look closely around the Garber Field arch you’ll see
Ashes left her paw prints in the concrete.
Marie Phillips worked in human resources at UMass Amherst
from 1978 to 2003. Her book about the campus cats, Dadcat
University, was published in 2011.

Moustache

48

umass amherst

Unforgettable

W E D D I N G S AT U M A S S A M H E R S T

LET UMASS PROVIDE YOU WITH
A DAY TO REMEMBER!
UMass is that unique venue you’ve
been looking for. With a reputation
for exceptional food, creative
displays and attentive service,
UMass has the experience to make
your wedding unforgettable.
Contact us at 413.577.8235
Catering@mail.aux.umass.edu
www.umass.edu/catering

MEETINGS • EVENTS • CONFERENCES

What makes the UMass Hotel and
Conference Center unique is the way
our entire focus is on you. Whether
you are planning a national
convention for 10,000
or a meeting for 10, our highly
trained and attentive staff are here
to accommodate you.
With premier onsite catering,
modern hotel accommodations,
flexible meeting space and full
service registration support,
UMass has something for everyone.

“I have always appreciated what
my UMass Amherst experience
has allowed me to do. I am now
in a position to give back.”
—Robert L. Duval ’58

TAKE STOCK IN UMASS AMHERST
Robert Duval ’58 recently invested in UMass Amherst by using his highly appreciated stock
to create a charitable gift annuity. In exchange for the stock, Bob and his wife, Concetta, will
receive a guaranteed income stream for life, a significant charitable income tax deduction,
and will amortize their reduced capital gains obligation over the life of their annuity. Bob
and Concetta are both pleased that the charitable gift annuity also provides a gift of future
support to UMass Amherst. The Duvals’ legacy gift will be used by the Chancellor to
increase the stature of UMass Amherst for future generations of students.
Bob Duval first enrolled as an undergraduate during the 1951-53 academic years. He
enlisted in the U.S. Army for two years and then returned to UMass Amherst using G.I.
Bill benefits to complete his B.S. degree in 1958. Bob worked in pharmaceuticals before
building a career as a financial advisor, retiring from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in 2000.
Married 54 years, Bob and Concetta live on Cape Cod and travel extensively. They have
three children and four grandchildren.

Charitable Gift Annuities can be funded with gifts beginning at $10,000.
To learn how you can convert your stocks to a lifetime income stream:
Call 413-577-1402; or contact pacheson@admin.umass.edu; or visit www.umass.edu/development/giving/planned